Project Avatar: Specimen A4179
by Curse of Immortality
Summary: 3000 AD. The Wheel of Reincarnation turns. The art of Bending lies forgotten, lying only in the hands of belligerent governments. With the Avatar cycle long broken, a government project engineers an artificial Avatar to turn the tides of War in its favor.
1. The Forging

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_Tuesday, May 21__st__, 3015_

_Underground Laboratory, Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_2:25 PM_

Entombed within a castle of gleaming chrome, swirling neon lights, luminescent computer screens, and beeping medical technology—as well as guarded by a virtual battalion of the world's most renown scientists from across the globe—stood a row of four alarmingly large test tubes, each easily the size of a large aquarium and filled to the brim with an eerie green plasma.

The tubes, or Incubators as they were called, rested within a room that was entirely coated in large panels of stainless steel, the cold visages of the bland metal giving a chilling, impersonal atmosphere to the room. Adorning the steel walls were display screens of all shapes and sizes, each bearing an immense load of dizzying statistical calculations that would bewilder the standard citizen. Numerous machines and computers littered the floor, walls, and worktables of the laboratory, each often accompanied by their own display screen and a myriad of blinking lights and multi-colored buttons adorning the surface.

Scientists bustled to and fro within the glimmering stainless steel vault that was the laboratory, their usually placid tempers rendered volcanic with the overwhelming stress of countless of sleepless nights and verbal dressing downs by their superiors. Orders were being shouted out through a series of connected telecoms, relaying the same message over and over again.

"_Begin Combat Simulation"_

A flurry of activity burst into existence as the already harried scientists leapt into action at their latest order—a sense of urgency and anticipation beginning to permeate throughout the room. Squadrons of scientists scrambled together at the command, forming several pre-determined Teams and taking up their respective corners of the lab.

"Alpha Team, ready on standby—Initiating simulation sequence." Spoke one of the group leaders, his voice floating over the chaotic laboratory and was quickly responded with a series of concurrences.

"Beta Team, ready on standby—Nervous response receptors up and running"

"Medical Team, ready on standby—Adrenaline and endorphin boosters administered"

"Gamma Team, ready on standby—Power generators and Arc-Wielders warming up"

A flurry of _clicks_ and _beeps_ accompanied each announcement, as the entire room was suddenly filled with a storm of blinking lights from every inch of the walls and desks. The crank of large lever was nearly drowned out by the cacophony of shouting voices and flicks of switches, but its result—a steady rumble that permeated the room as the power generators activated—could not have gone unnoticed as their processes created a sort of turbulence that shook the ground ever so slightly.

A toneless, mechanical voice seemed to resound from the very walls of the laboratory, it's cool, impersonal voice bouncing off the similarly stainless steel walls, "_Combat simulation sequence: Initiated."_

The enormous display screen embedded into the wall flickered to life, displaying a boundless canyon range of ashy, burgundy soil that was surrounded by thousands of craggy rock surfaces and towering mountains.

Deep in the heart of the canyon, a violent river roared with the earth-shattering intensity of a thousand lightning bolts as it crashed against the canyon walls, tearing apart enormous chunks of rock at a time as it cleaved its path through the walls of stone. Enclosing both sides of the river was a massive valley of hardened, beaten down rock littered with various shrubbery, broken metal shells of abandoned and rusted automobiles, and large burgundy boulders.

From above, the desert sun beat heavily down from a cloudless sky upon the ashy soil, its exceptionally powerful rays smoldering the dried up and decayed forms of withered plants and animal carcasses. A wave of heavy, turbulent wind blew through the valley—the product of violent desert winds funneled by immovable rock until they reached to near tempest-level force—kicking up a storm of ash, dust, and rocks from the rocky floors.

All four elements were present.

Behind the growing crowd of scientists fighting for a good spot to view the large display screen in the laboratory, four sets glowing blue eyes burst into existence within the emerald darkness of the test tubes, revealing the presence of a human-like figure locked within the thick, murky depths of green plasma.

*****************

He opened his searingly cold blue eyes once more, breathing in the acrid scent brought upon by desert conditions such as that of this canyon range.

He felt energized—no, revitalized—beyond imagination, the last resting sleep evidently had been his deepest one and he considered himself lucky for having awoken to partake in the taste of battle once more, considering the bitter tang of blood that had filled his lungs from their last trial—a result from a devastating blow from a Goliath like none other that had crushed his lungs and pounded his chest plate into dust.

He looked beside him and breathed a relieved sigh as he perceived the presence of his three other Brothers—especially his youngest brother, whose affinity resided within the whimsical nature of Air.

_Good. They had survived._

The three elder Brothers shared a frighteningly protective nature toward their youngest, and weakest, Brother—whose Avatar State was the most unpredictable of them all, often tapping into a smaller well of power than his Siblings but occasionally also capable of enormous feats of Bending that overpowered them all more than once.

Such was the nature of an Avatar whose affinity resided within the fickle natures of the wind.

The crackling and swirling of a sudden whirlpool within the raging waters of the river broke the Brother from his worthless, dust-collecting musings and he took a quick glance at the battlefield, taking in their position within the heart of the valley—at the very shores of the raging river—and that it was surrounded by stone walls easily over a mile high. The battleground was littered with rocks, debris, and other such obstacles that would soon prove to be good shelters from the next monster that presented itself to them.

The river swelled suddenly, and the rapids parted in a geyser of water to reveal an enormous Leviathan, a serpent-like monster with shiny black scales and insidious decorations formed by unique formations of its yellow scales scattered intricately all over its body. Its body was limbless, lacking any arms or legs except for the innumerable emerald fins that spread over its body like enormous fans.

The Leviathan reared up like a posing cobra, flaring out its fins, and roared a guttural challenge, revealing the rows upon rows of gleaming razor teeth as the constraining walls of the valley echoed the scream a hundred times back at them, forming a nauseating wave of sound that pounded at the Avatars' heads.

He felt his body unconsciously shift into his classic offensive stance, reveling in the feel of liquid flames that rush through his veins and the pounding light of the desert sun on his crimson cloak.

The Four Avatars slid into their stances, their powerful limbs entirely hidden from the desert sun by large, billowing robes with hoods that were color coded for their respective elements—red for the firebender, blue for the waterbender, green for the earthbender, and yellow for the airbender.

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_Project Avatar began as a privately funded operation, dedicated to the research and study of specialized genetic mutations within the Human Genome that seemed to give our ancient Ancestors the ability to wield and guide the elements at their whim, and of the story of one being—the Avatar, a god-like being capable of wielding all four elements and who's existence seemingly transcending even Death and Reality. _

Above all the chaos and excitement created by the scientists, who roared and clamored as their creations clashed against an impossibly powerful virtual construction in a test of both will and cunning, Head Scientist Professor Gyatso, a celebrated geneticist who's mental ability was unlike the world had ever seen, rested within the lighted confines of his office, busily tapping away at his keyboard.

_In delving into the disappearance of this ancient art within the cultures of our ancestors, Project Avatar first discovered that the fall of these Benders came after the Great Cataclysm five centuries ago, when most of the world's population was wiped out. The Benders never did return to prominence since then, as people with the potential to bend must be tutored within their art and culture. Without these backbones, the practice of bending becomes incapable of producing nothing more than a simple parlor trick._

_However, as the research delved deeper into the bending of our ancient Ancestors, and as the increasing numbers of evidence toward the existence of the ancient art of Bending began to sway the minds of the officials seated within the highest ranks of government, the Federal government of Ba Sing Se began to seize control of the project and convert it from its original purpose. Gathering the knowledge acquired from the project's intense research, the Earth King was able the identify a means through which Benders could be identified at birth, and began an extensive military program designed to use these extraordinary people in the only way that Humanity has always used such powers._

_As Weapons._

_Equipped with the knowledge of the existence of benders and their training, the Earth King swiftly created a military wing dedicated solely to the acquirement and training of benders from a young age. At many times, these children were taken from their homes only a few years after their birth and then placed in isolation camps where each and every bender was brainwashed into upmost servitude toward the Earth King. They were trained to be loyal to the King, and only to their King, not even to their nation. _

_The earthbenders of the Ba Sing Se essentially became the Black-Ops for the Earth Kingdom and were used extensively for sabotage and tactical warfare. It was not uncommon, during those times of war, that an enemy battalion or convoy would suddenly be crushed beneath an avalanche—and there was no way for the foreign nations to prove that anything other than nature had been the cause for such casualties. _

_Even so, the other nations, especially in the case of the Fire Nation, learned of the existence of benders hidden within their own populations by use of espionage within the ranks of the Earth Kingdom's monarchy. They thus, also began to form their own armies of benders, leading to an escalation of world powers._

*****************

The once acrid and densely packed rock of the canyon floor was now drowned beneath a virtual sea of raging waters, as the Leviathan had drawn the violent rapids from the river out of its earthly constraints and brought it crashing down upon the four Avatars.

The youngest Avatar immediately summoned a whirlwind beneath him and his Brothers, floating the four Avatars just above the initial tidal wave right before the Leviathan swung it down like a sledgehammer.

The wave of water from the river crashed against the valley floor and, suddenly, a geysers of water began erupting from the jagged crevice that marked the original resting place of the river—a body of water having been dragged forward by the Leviathan from underneath the canyon and onto the battlefield.

Before long, the battlefield was nothing more than a turbulent sea at high tide as hundreds of gallons of water continued to rise up from below the earth.

The Waterbender swung his arms down with a pounding motion, freezing the raging tide beneath them into a mountainous tundra of ice. Hundreds of chains and hooks of ice suddenly burst into existence, converging upon the Leviathan—the icy coils looping and snagging onto the serpents body as they grounded the beast onto the icy floor from all directions.

The serpent writhed and flailed against the icy shackles but the Water Bender held on obstinately, bending the chains of ice so that enormous icy barbs formed on the shackles to agonizingly dig into the serpent's body—prompting a screaming wail that echoed painfully against the narrow valley walls as it drilled into the Avatars' skulls.

The Waterbender turned the hood of his cloak toward the other three, his terse tone hinting at the mental strain it was taking to hold down the serpent,

"What are you guys _doing_?!" He hissed, "_Hurry up already!_"

Floating on the whirlwind not too far off from the similarly airborne Waterbender, the Earthbender had clasped hands with the firebender and they swung together in an intricate dance, their arms following a pushing and pulling motion much like that of the flow of the ocean washing up on the shores of a sandy beach.

The northern stone wall of the valley swelled and bulged at two Benders' motions, the solid rock straining and groaning as they were forced to sway backwards and forwards. Smoke and steam was curiously pouring out from the tiny cracks that had begun to appear at the surface of the cliff side as a result of the strain on the stone walls.

With a loud cry, the two Benders dragged their arms backward, as if pulling an immense weight, and the stone wall of north side of the valley exploded into a rockslide, spewing out a river of molten lava that poured onto the thrashing Leviathan. Sulfurous smoke and poisonous gas poured out of the gaping wound in the earth along with the molten rock, poisoning the air around the valley and mixing with the steam that had begun to rise off of the glacial ice holding on the Leviathan as a result of the magma pouring over the trapped monster and its shackles.

The barbed chains of ice, already weakened by the struggling beast and now by the molten rock pouring all over them, snapped easily at the Leviathan's renewed struggles.

Now free, the Leviathan slammed its maw into the frozen tundra, sending a spider web of cracks along its surface before slamming through the icy floor with a sledgehammer blow with its tail.

The blow crashed through the icy surface, revealing an icy ocean hidden beneath the frozen surface, and the creature dived into the freezing waters, escaping from the geyser of lava pouring from the cliff side. Behind it, the icy surface of the ocean collapsed as the spider web of fissures spread throughout it entirely, fracturing the frozen surface into nothing more than small islands of ice floating amidst an icy ocean.

The Airbender, having lifted himself high above the combat going on below, clasped his arms together; his form glowing with power as ominously dark thunderclouds suddenly appeared at the horizon of a once cloudless sky.

He grunted, straining to pull together a violent enough storm, as thunderclouds from all sides of the horizon began to converge upon the battlefield.

The Waterbender joined him in the air, uplifted by another whirlwind, and, together, the storm grew denser and stronger in intensity. They spun their arms as one as the approaching storm swirled around them in a violent spiral—a spiral that followed the rotation of their arms as the furious storm converged onto a single point in the sky far above them.

When the sky became as pitch-black as the night, and the air thick with humidity and caustic tension, the Waterbender and the Airbender spun in unison, the glowing eyes of their Avatar state making a trailing circle of light around them, and they forced their arms down—as if dragging down a tree branch or a particularly persistent bird.

At their motion, the swirling clouds began a spinning descent toward the raging ocean below them, forming a furious tornado that crashed into the icy waters and began to vacuum up all of the frigid water within itself.

Forced to retreat, or else be sucked into the tornado, the Leviathan swum desperately against the swirling whirlpool the tornado had created in the water, and dove into the deep crevice of the valley floor that had originally housed the river— a retreat that allowed the ocean that it had created to dissipate and return the battlefield to its original state.

The four Avatars sunk back down onto the solid ground and the tornado, no long guided by the two Benders, returned to the sky, pulling all the water it had accumulated with it.

The four Avatars and their adversary fell into a stalemate again as the rushing tides of water poured out again, followed by geysers of volcanic rock, the tumbling of avalanches, and the scream of whirling tornadoes.

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_With the discovery of benders within every prominent nation, the advantage that the Earth King held over the other nations dwindled and failed. Forced into a brutal stalemate, the Earth Kingdom was finally forced to agree to a non-aggression pact with the other nations, or else risk being conquered._

_The War of the Benders had ended, but the Earth King, in his last days of his life, sought a new edge against his enemies, the power of the Avatar. However, with the Avatar being missing for over 500 years—having completely disappeared from all records after the Great Cataclysm—there was neither record nor clue of even the existence of an Avatar within the Modern Age._

*****************

Despite the scalding temperatures of the volcanic lava, the intense pressures of the raging tsunami, the lashing winds of the tornado, and the blunt pounding of an avalanche; the Leviathan's audacious vitality remained relatively unharmed as it countered by sweeping its scaly tail across the canyon floor, cleaving apart the canyon floor with its razor sharp fins and causing a flurry of quaking vibrations to rumble the canyon floor.

The Avatars leaped into the air, buoyed up by the Youngest's airbending, as the ground suddenly crumbled beneath them—the granite-like rock suddenly breaking up into sand and the entire canyon floor becoming an enormous whirlpool of sand as the ground violently swirled into a single point in the ground.

The Avatar robed in the red cloak growled, "What in Agni's name is that?"

His earthbending Brother replied quietly, shifting from his weight from side to side—clearly uneasy with this new development.

"It's a kind of earthbending. It broke up the ground so it could eliminate all the porous holes present within the rock and its now condensing all that rock into a single point."

The Firebender frowned, "So? What's the point of doing that?"

The youngest Avatar rolled his eyes at him, "You mean, other than trying to kill us?"

The crimson Avatar scowled, but his retort was cut off by the Earthbender, who continued as if there had been no interruption, "Diamond. That's how you can make diamond. A lot of heat and a lot of pressure."

The three other Avatars blinked at him, "Diamond? What does it want diamond for? It's a monster, not a human being…"

The Earthbender could only shrug.

The Waterbender sighed, and began bending the water in the river far below them.

"How about we try doing something instead of standing around and chatting?"

They nodded collectively, and began to bend their elements once more, before the Earthbender scowled at his feet. He was still uncomfortable with the idea of bending earth while midair.

"Brother? Mind letting us down anytime soon? Hanging around in mid air isn't exactly fun for everybody…"

"Oh, right. My bad…"

They slowly floated back down onto the whirlpool of sand, which had already begun to slow down.

*****************

The scientists watched as the swirling sands slowed, the vicious whirlpool becoming nothing more than an odd swirl formation in the sand. When the sands settled, the four Avatars leapt toward the strangely still Leviathan.

_As his last wish, the Earth King ordered the beginning of a project that would be the birth of an artificial Avatar, the unique splicing of the Human Genome in order to create a Super Weapon that would be able to command all four elements—the ultimate Bender. _

_Project Avatar is the culmination of his last wish. At first, we encountered extreme difficulties with attempting to force even one human to host the genetic traits required to wield all four elements, as the combination often resulted in schizophrenia, physical disability, and other such worrying ailments._

Suddenly, the earth was shaking beneath them, the sands were parting curiously and the four Avatars had barely anytime to react when a storm of diamond blades began flying out of the sands, each serrated blade spinning like whirlwind of death as they spiraled toward the Avatars.

_It was only later, with the realization that the original Avatar was a spiritual entity that bonds with its hosts and provides a psychic link to their past lives that we began to make progress. We were able to create a metaphysical entity—aptly named AVATAR—very much in tune with the whims of nature and thus capable of wielding all four elements. We then spliced AVATAR between fifty subjects, imbuing each one with a spiritual shard of AVATAR. These subjects, once deceased, would then release their AVATAR and allow it to fuse with the other remaining hosts, thus reforming the entity through gradual steps that would theoretically allow the final host to adapt to the burden of AVATAR with minimal damages to the psyche._

The Youngest Avatar took to the sky, his form blurring as he vanished into storm clouds which still hung heavily over the battlefield—easily escaping the cloud of flying blades with his sheer acceleration.

The Water Bender spun a vineyard of water tentacles around himself, each slapping away and redirecting the diamond blades before they could reach him.

The Fire Bender became a rocket, enormous jets of flame sprout from his hands and feet like jet engines as he became a flaming comet soaring into the sky.

The Earth Bender slammed his feet into the sandy dirt, forging a virtual fortress of earth around him; but the constitution of the earth had been greatly weakened by the conversion of solid rock into sand and the swirling diamond blades pierced the earthen fortress like a hot knife going through butter.

The blades drilled their way through the earthy walls, and burst through the other side completely undeterred.

The fortress was crumbling, its walls shattered and butchered as they began to meekly crumble upon themselves, and then it suddenly returned to a wave of sand that just poured down onto the floor. The Earth Bender stood in its epicenter of his sand dune, and he slowly crumbled—just like his fortress—onto the sandy ground.

_Thus, in order to create one Avatar, all but one host must be killed. There are no ways around this rule._

His green cloak was suddenly torn from him and a wave of blood seemed to erupt from his body, revealing the numerous holes that riddled his chest—to the point where there were more bleeding and gaping holes in his body than flesh. The flesh from his torso had been totally stripped from its bone, leaving it to sag down and wrinkle as a lumpy mass of grounded organs mixed with blood slowly dripped from his torso.

He gasped weakly as his eyes dimmed and his breath stilled.

"**BROTHER!!!"**

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_Journal Log Entry #37_

_We executed Specimen No. E7093 today, an event marked with great celebration by our elite staff. There was much drinking, dancing, and cavorting in the Recreation room of the laboratory._

_I could not help but feel disgusted at such antics._

_Have we really degraded so much that we are capable of such elation when one of our own—a human being—has just died at our own hands? Or do they celebrate in drunken revelry as a means to escape their conscience which, even now, screams at us for continuing this project? _

_It is a dilemma in of itself._

_Should our project succeed, there is no doubt that a vast, perhaps even an innumerable, number of lives will be lost because of our actions. Yet, I cannot help but wish that it did succeed, that my life's work has not been in vain. _

_Nevertheless, our project is coming to a close, as there remain only two more Avatars to go. We shall chose between who shall die and who shall live in the way that we always have, by means of the survival of the fittest. _

_I only pray that my soul and humanity would remain intact after this project._

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_Journal Log Entry #39_

_The death of Specimen No. E7093 has had substantial effects on psychological well-being of his fellow specimen. It seems that, although our four subjects had never seen each other's faces, they had shared a silent camaraderie, perhaps even a bond of brotherhood, and the loss of one has had profound damage on both the morale and performance of the remaining specimen._

_The fact that this phenomenon has occurred arises several matters of anxiety for us. The success of Project Avatar hangs on the premise that the resulting specimen is fully functional in all definitions of the word, whether psychological, physical, or spiritual. Even if all pieces of AVATAR are allowed to return to one entity, the matter will be irrelevant if the specimen emerges as a sociopath or otherwise damaged._

_It seems that we have made a fatal error in the execution of this project, for we have failed to account for influence AVATAR holds over its hosts—that they would feel a sense of spiritual kinship through AVATAR even when they have been entirely dehumanized from each other._

_Even now, our scientists are working to reverse the damage—but it is unlikely that they will be able to do so completely before the next stage of Project Avatar must begin. Our benefactors and superiors grow restless with the amount of money and time the project has already taken, and they have begun to pressure us—even threatening to pull funding._

_I hope that these new pressures would not cause us to make a fatal step._

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_Journal Log Entry #51_

_Despite all my warnings against it, the next stage of the project has been initiated—far too soon, in my honest opinion, as the specimen have not recovered from the loss of one of their valued brothers._

_Specimen No. W9314, informally known by our staff as merely the Waterbender, was executed upon this day._

_As expected, the loss of yet another brother has only worsened the two remaining specimen's failing psychological condition. Our scanners have indicated that their neuroactivity appears to have become erratic, often shifting from periods of violent distress to complete and utter silence. _

_On the positive side, the remaining Avatars have begun to show a natural aptitude for earthbending—a sure sign that the shard of AVATAR from the earthbender has already begun fusing itself with the shards held by the remaining hosts. _

_The project is working, but time grows even shorter and there is little time before the final step of the project must be made. Now, never than ever before, are we so close to success, and yet so close to absolute failure. It is unclear, as of now, what will be the final outcome of the Project—as it closes into its final stage…_

*****************

He grasped his fallen Brother's hand.

Breathing a heavy, almost sobbing gasp, he dropped to his knees at his Brother's side.

A blackened hand coated in ash—a hand so small…so tiny that it couldn't possibly be his that was poking out of his yellow cloak—reached out to the fallen form beside him.

It grasped the tattered, seared remains of a red cloak—markings of the enormous pyre of flames that had seared his Brother's chest and mutilated his body. A cataclysm of fire that had been heading for him, only to be intercepted by his Brother.

_It's my fault…_

_If only I wasn't so __**stupid**__, if only I wasn't so __**weak**__._

It was there that he buried the body of his Brother, wrapping him in the cloak he had always worn.

He buried his Brother in that battlefield, a ruined, crumbling shell of a once thriving urban metropolis now shattered by the markings of war. The once towering sky scrapers, the fingers of Humanity that had touched the Heavens, were now laid low—charred, and crumbled into nothing more than mere ash and dust by the rain of artillery fire that had totaled the city.

Fingers of asphalt now stretched towards the stars in their place, the roads shaped into great earthen spikes by the gift of earthbending that another fallen Brother had given to them at his last breath. Dead bodies and mangled corpses littered the floor; bodies of civilians, infantry, and benders alike; their broken flesh and spilled blood mingling with each other and pooling into large puddles of gooey crimson mulch.

The Enemy, their last Enemy together, had not been a single being—not a titanic creature of the Oceans, nor a monstrous Bender from the far reaches of the world—but rather had been an army, a legion, of men in dark camouflage and guns rusted over in coatings upon coatings of blood.

They had riddled the air so thick with bullets that, for a brief, terrifying second, he had thought he faced a swarm of iron locusts instead.

He and his brother had fought with everything they had, discarding every shred of morality they had and using every single element, every tactic in the book, in order to survive the onslaught. Even so, when the sky began to rain fire—pouring down artillery shells and guided missiles—there had been nothing either of them could do except try to _survive_ in a hellish world filled with blinding flames and choking smoke.

In the end, when the cataclysm was over, he had awoken from an oblivion he had not realized he had fallen into—and found his Brother laid on top of him, shielding his life with his own.

Gone.

His Brother had left the world bequeathing him as his last living legacy.

He was the last of his family.

They had been a family of fifty. Now they were only one.

There was no one else in this world, no one but himself—and countless numbers of faceless enemies, enemies who had ruthlessly slaughtered his Brothers and Sisters one by one until he was all that remained.

After that, there was nothing he could do except scream.

Screamat the burning world around him.

Scream at the silhouettes of enemies approaching in the black smoke of gunpowder.

Scream until the earth roared with his rage, and the ground became his fingers as spires of earth rose from beneath them, rumbling and pounding—twisting and crushing—until human bodies became nothing more than pulp in the dirt.

Scream until the oceans thundered with his fury, and the skies become his arms—opening up as thousands of frozen blades rained from the sky and the oceans swallowed his enemies whole.

Scream until the winds howled with his wrath, and the clouds became his hands—reaching down from their heavenly seats and fingers of destruction gouging trails of desolation onto the world.

Scream until his screams came no more, screamed until his screams became dying whimpers—wracking sobs of agonizing grief as the last of his family died in his arms.

And he sobbed.

He sobbed as his fingers dug pierced the asphalt, digging into the earth below and slowly scratching a tomb for his last Brother.

*****************

_Journal Log Entry #73_

_Seconds have become minutes. Minutes have become hours. Hours have become days. Days have become months. Months have become Years._

_Ever since the final step, ever since the completion of Project Avatar, the final host, Specimen A4179, has become nonresponsive. His body continues to function, but all neuroactivity within the cerebrum has come to a halt._

_For all intents and purposes, Specimen A4179 has entered a coma he may never awaken from—and thus, Project Avatar has been officially classified as a failure._

_The members within the high echelons of government have been humiliated with the massive temporal and monetary expenses involved with the failed project. It is inevitable that retribution shall fall upon us now, especially me, its Head Scientist._

_Even so, I feel no remorse; I feel no shame in the failure of this project. It is a curious emotion, but I am gladdened that all our efforts that we have placed into Project Avatar have failed—even though I know that more than shame and humiliation shall come to me because of this failure._

_Should we have succeeded, Project Avatar would have created a highly mobile and catastrophically destructive force, one nearly impervious to damage of any kind, and capable of manipulating virtually any natural force. Furthermore, the extensive Combat Simulation Program of Project Avatar placed the Avatar into almost every single feasible combat situation that could exist within this world, and even a few that couldn't have, and then made it capable of overcoming said situation—no matter how impossible the odds were or how many times our Victory Probability Calculators equated the probability of the Avatar surviving the situation as 0%._

_That kind of power, one that can bend every scientific rule and logic in the world and even twist the very fabric of reality, should never lie within the hands of humanity—and especially not that of a young child susceptible to the extensive brainwashing program that the Earth King had already planned in apprehension of the project's success._

_In light of the project's failure, the Earth King decreed the laboratory compound shall be shut down and annihilated, its last specimen executed, and all of its data eradicated. There will be no further need of such data anyway._

_It is very likely that this shall be my last log entry for Project Avatar, as my participation in the selective annihilation of fifty human lives is not something I wish to remember._

_-Professor Gyatso, Head Scientist of Project Avatar_

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_Wednesday, September 26__th__, 3019_

_Underground Laboratory, Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_5:46 PM_

Professor Gyatso sighed as he twisted his chair around from the computer resting on his office table and rose to his feet.

He glanced at the clock, _15:35_, and nodded solemnly—it was time.

Professor Gyatso left his office, taking with him a small plastic bag that contained a small syringe.

His fellow scientists were already lined up in front of the sole remaining test tube, their expressions a bewildering amalgamation of hopeless sorrow, heart-breaking grief, and utter confusion.

He stood before them for a brief while, gazing each and every one of them in the eye—saying nothing, but his broken, sorrowful gaze stirred in them more heartbreaking emotions than any words from the human tongue could profess. Many of them could hardly bear to meet his eyes for more than a second before looking away, but the truly remorseful ones—the ones who knew the consequences of what they had done, and of what they had tried to do—met his gaze firmly, even as shameful tears dripped down their cheeks as they bared themselves openly to the full extent of his silent admonishment.

Gyatso turned then, clicking the button to drain the luminescent green plasma of the sole test tube in the room. As the liquid slid away, the entire congregation of scientists saw, many of them for their first time, the fragile youth of their final specimen—nothing more than a tiny child somewhere between the ages of eight and nine.

A child they had forced into enduring countless numbers of brutal wars and massive conflicts.

A child they had stripped away his original family from, brutalized his childhood, and then destroyed the last vestiges of his new family.

The child was of an Asian descent and his frame thin and slender, his arms and legs like gentle twigs that one could expect to be broken with the slightest touch. His head shaved entirely bald, and his limbs and his forehead were tattooed with a series of streamlined arrows, the ones on his arms pointing outward from his fists and the large arrow on his forehead pointing down.

For all the tender, earthly weakness the body of the child, the strength imbued within the host of Avatar was belied by the brilliant, haunting light that poured out from his eyes and his tattoos. Despite the blazing light, however, the child was utterly unresponsive to any stimulus and was out without a single synapse within his cerebrum.

Gyatso gently pushed the syringe into the Avatar's arm, and slowly pressed down on the dispenser until the syringe was empty.

And they all watched as the light from the tattoos began to flicker and fade, the once brilliant light slowly disappearing from his body.

*****************

"Move!"

A tall, muscular man dressed in dark green robes emblazoned with the crest of the Earth Kingdom and a large green Li that rested upon his head, obscuring his eyes, prodded the line of scientists forward.

The scientists shuffled forward, exiting the labyrinth of cold steel that constituted the laboratory as they were herded on by a crowd of similarly dressed agents. The agents followed in the wake of scientists, their expressions utterly apathetic to the nervous glances the scientists kept shooting at the government agents.

They marched on at a casual pace, even as the ground beneath them trembled and quaked, even as the walls of the laboratory began to crumble behind them—the metal plates twisting, screaming, and buckling under the immense weight of stone pressing down upon the metal structure.

With the terrible screech, the laboratory behind them suddenly imploded, clouds of dust spewing out into the air as the structure crumbled beneath the might of an elite team of earthbenders trained toward specialized demolitions.

The scientists, now cold and shivering in the frigid temperatures of the Earth Kingdom's midnights, could only watch as their second home, the place where their hopes and dreams had taken form, was reduced to nothing more than broken rubble and piles of twisted metal as a group of robed agents thrust their arms down as if shutting the lid of a treasure chest.

"Line them up against the wall", one of the agents ordered, clearly the leader despite being a visual duplicate of his fellow agents.

In a flash, the agents who had been herding them out of the laboratory thrust their arms at the scientists, and each and every scientist found himself shacked to a cement wall by stone gauntlets.

Alarm and fear beset the incarcerated scientists, and they began to scream and struggle against their bonds—to no avail,

"What is the meaning of this?!"

"WAIT! I did nothing!"

"NO!"

Only Gyatso remained silent and docile against his bonds, his head bowed in shame.

'_I'm so sorry, Avatar…'_

In unison, the agents lined up across from every shackled scientist and reached into their robes, withdrawing a black assault rifle.

The leader nodded.

"You are approved to open fire."

He said, his calm, placid voice was unmistakable and uninterrupted even amidst the sudden screams and yells of terror that had erupted amongst the scientists.

A brief series of flashing lights illuminated the concrete jungle around them and the air was filled with the sound of rushing gunfire.

*****************

_Friday, May 24__th__, 3021_

_Bei Fong Residence, Gaoling, Earth Kingdom_

_1:05 PM_

Radiant light was pouring in from a cloudless sky on a bright sunny day, illuminating the masonry of a large mansion and its gardens that rested in its own alcove in the town of Gaoling. The gardens were a fine example of nature tamed by human hands, its labyrinthine paths arranged into orderly rows and pathways—all a rich emerald green that speckled in the bright sunlight. Small piles of smooth rocks lay scattered in an aesthetically pleasing manner around the ground as a sort of counterbalance.

A fragrant wind blew across the gardens and a gentle purple flower swayed in the calm, summer breeze. Tiny ripples, like miniscule waves of an ocean, formed upon the garden pond's surface, refracting the Sun's heady glare into a hundred shards of shimmering light cast upon the water.

However, for all the beauty of the garden, in its well manicured and pristine feel, the stunning aspects of nature were completely lost on its only observer.

The lone observer seated on the porch of an extensive mansion overlooking the family garden tilted her head curiously, allowing a sheet of inky black hair to fall between her eyes. It was a girl, a thin but wiry child with smooth, pale skin framed by a curtain of sleek, inky bangs that floated over her unfocused green eyes—obscuring their clouded depths. She was clothed in a thin, green dress with a pale lime-green yukata wrapped gently around her—a color combination that supposedly complimented her murky green eyes.

Her _blind_ murky green eyes.

So what if the dumb outfit complimented her eyes? Not like she could tell, anyway.

Toph Bei Fong's pale, almost porcelain, features twisted into a scowl as she tugged uncomfortably at the silky fabric of the yukata—she felt entirely out of place being dressed up like some sort of a doll when she wanted nothing more than to run outside and be a normal child, to get filthy by playing in the dirt with friends or stain her clothes by running with others in the grass.

But no, she had to stay at home, hidden and isolated from the rest of the world, just because her parents had stubbornly decided that being blind meant being absolutely helpless.

Damn it.

She wanted to _go_, to leave this gilded cage of deceitful luxury and escape into a world where she could live however she wished—and be whomever she wanted to be, not who others wanted her to be.

Allowing an exasperated sigh to escape from her lips, Toph morosely kicked at the dirt, and fell into silence when the gentle vibrations moved through the still earth—like the clear ringing of a silver bell in a silent room—and illuminated the darkness of her world with distant shapes and figures.

She cocked her head again, planting both feet into the grassy dirt as she listened to the gentle voice of the earth speaking to her.

'_Come. Let us walk the Path together.' _

A tug. She felt a tug, as if an enormous insubstantial hand had just cradled her tiny body in its palm and gently pulled at her.

Toph glided to her feet, her ascension full of boneless grace like a puppet drawn up by its strings.

Tug.

It felt like her soul was being tugged forward, and her body was just being pulled in its wake—like a horse dragging a carriage.

She blinked. A sudden, desperate need to escape rushed through her veins, scattering all other thoughts in its wake and leaving nothing else in her mind,

She needed to get out…

Toph felt three heavy sets of footsteps rotating around the garden, pounding away at the ground much harder than any animal that lived in the garden.

_Guards_, she judged, from their organized and purposeful patrol routes around the gardens. Her parents had hired guards to patrol the perimeter of their home, not only to keep out intruders but also to keep Toph from leaving the house without permission—which she was never given, ever.

She watched their rotations, silently observing as they followed through the same patrol routes over and over again.

Toph frowned; the rotation of the guards was designed so that almost every single part of the garden was being watched by at least one guard at any given time. It would be extremely difficult to get through the gardens unnoticed, unless…

She smirked, a devious plan drawing itself in her mind.

Toph twisted her right foot, focusing on the spot of dirt just ahead of an approaching guard

_There!_

A small ledge of earth popped out of the ground, snagging the boot of the passing guard and sending him tumbling onto the ground. The guard swore angrily as he got back onto his feet and, as if just realizing his rather unprofessional outburst, gave an embarrassed cough before continuing on his patrol without a second thought.

The systematic efficiency of the guard rotation had been broken, as the other two guards had continued on their patrol without realizing the slight delay in the third guard's patrol. Now, there was a tiny blind spot between the second guard and the third, where she would be able to slip in and out of the gardens without being caught.

Toph grinned, a thrill of elation pumping through her as she realized that she had had enough of her 'home'—this may be the last time she saw this prison.

'_It's about time I ditched this place'_

She slipped back into the house, _'About time I ditched this outfit too'_

*****************

AN: A "Li" is a large conical hat, much like that of the Chinese bamboo hat.

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar. This doesn't get me money.


	2. The Awakening

AN: Hey, guys. Thanks for all of your wonderful reviews and your support! It's really heartwarming and encouraging. And well, for those complaining about the length of my chapters…sorry! It's only going to get longer as the story progresses .;

*****************

_Friday, May 24__th__, 3021_

_District 59, Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_3:34 PM_

"_**We have arrived at the city of Omashu. It is currently 3:34 PM on a Friday afternoon, May 24th. Thank you for traveling with us on the Earth Continental and we hope you come back soon." **_

With a loud hiss, the automatic train doors slid open, unleashing a hoard of passengers out into the already crowded subway station. The peculiar sense of organized chaos that reigned in the city subways only intensified at this new addition, so no one noticed when a small slip of girl, dressed in a thin green T-shirt and loose knee-length black nylon shorts, emerged out of the train with them, pushed along by the current of people flowing out into the station.

Stepping out of the metal confines of the train, Toph let out a relieved sigh when her bare feet pressed against the hard stone tiles of the subway underground.

'_Thank the Spirits for stone floors! I hate that stupid junkyard metal…'_

The station was packed with well-dressed men and women, each of them busily hurrying to their destinations, and the vibrations of their obnoxious footsteps—coupled with the cacophony of a hundred different voices holding their own separate conversations—was enough to disorient Toph, which served only to infuriate her already frayed nerves.

Toph Bei Fong paused to scowl at the enormous crowd amassing around the subway corridors before diving into the crowd, rudely shoving her way through the tides of overdressed people and giving a vicious glare to anyone who so much as looked at her oddly.

Even as she swam through the crowd record time, a grumble of impatience rumbled from her throat.

The anticipation was _killing _her, she wanted to hurry up and taste what life outside of Gaoling felt like, and experience what it felt to finally be free and in a completely different city so far from home.

But from the vibrations she could feel pounding within the earth, there was little more here than steel cages and an avalanche of a thousand stomping footsteps bouncing against the tile floors.

Finally pushing her way through the oppressive crowd of self-important men and women, Toph emerged from the musty and overcrowded corridors of the subway and into the afternoon light of the city of Omashu.

She inhaled a deep breath of air, taking in the smell of the city—a lurid mix of animal feces, human urine, and choking carbon monoxide smog. The whispering voice of the earth tickled at her feet, reporting of a decadent city densely populated with sodomy, crime, and hubris.

Her brilliant smile, lighted in expectation of a bustling utopian metropolis—it was supposed to be the most romantic city in the world, after all—fell in the harsh face of reality.

Suddenly, the idea of finally being free and independent from her parents didn't seem so glorious. What was there to do in a place like this? There was no burst of energy, no new fragrance of _life_ that she always imagined she would feel when she finally escaped Gaoling with no intentions of returning—ever.

Was this the smell of freedom? The feeling of independence she had so longed for?

Toph shook her head, _'What a disgusting place.'_

*****************

_Hall of Destiny, Spirit World_

A dream of endless possibilities lay at his doorstep.

It was a room, an endless room, filled with an oppressing shroud of darkness that permeated every corner—stretching toward the very edges of oblivion. Darkened and shrouded in this endless fog were hundreds of thousands of characters, personas, emotions, and other transient snippets of existence that played themselves out before his eyes.

A shadow—no, a silhouette—appeared in the black haze, and the misty darkness seemed to swirl around it, enveloping it with all the care of a lover's gentle touch.

Lost and alone, he stretched toward the obscured figure, accidentally bringing forth a blaze of brilliant blue light at the motion. The flash of light leapt out into the darkness, and the mist parted before it, rewarding him with a brief glimpse of a woman, dark skinned with bright azure eyes that stared out at him through the darkness.

She reached out to him beseechingly, her arm stretching like a bridge crossing over the abyss, but the dark veil swung back just as quickly as it had parted—consuming the woman entirely and leaving nothing more than a clear echo of her voice ringing in the shadows.

"_Why didn't you tell us you were the Avatar?"_

The mist shifted again as his outstretched hand, risen in an attempt to take her hand, fell back to his side, abandoned.

Beautifully clouded green eyes burst into existence just inches from his face—gifting him with an intense gaze that expressed a thousand indescribable emotions in just one glance—

"_Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime‌?"_

The eyes closed shut and turned away, disappearing into the fog, but a flash of recollection had burst into his mind, a memory of clasped hands—a small hand, rough and callused fingers from use but smooth palms, deceptively small.

He stepped back, startled as brief flashes of memories and experiences suddenly swelled in his head.

Like a crack in a dam that first trickles before unleashing a deluge of water, he was suddenly besieged by a clamor of visions suddenly playing themselves out before his eyes—simultaneously painting a picture of a thousand existences unraveling themselves all at once. Figures began phasing into existence, crowding the shadowy room with their numbers and packing the room like sardines until suddenly their bodies were pressing against him, jostling him roughly around.

Before he knew it, he was suddenly swimming in a sea of moving bodies and, with them, an ocean of memories from thousands of lives, thousands of existences.

The dark mist began shifting—swirling into a furious maelstrom of shadow as it coalesced into a monstrous typhoon as hundreds of glowing blue eyes suddenly stared out at him from the darkness. He was spinning, soaring, as the raging storm seized him from the shuffling crowd, like a withered twig torn off its branches by an unstoppable ocean, and sent him soaring into the sky—buffeted by harsh winds.

Piercing even the harsh screaming of the wrathful typhoon, a thousand voices spoke in flawless unison from the endless darkness below him—their combined voices suddenly echoing unceasingly off the walls of darkness, as if they were suddenly in an enormous canyon.

"_**Awaken, young Avatar, and grasp the Destiny of which you have been given. You are our adopted descendant, the forged legacy of a legend that has disappeared from this world for centuries. Ever since the Reincarnation Cycle was broken five hundred years ago, the world has been thrown into an abyss of chaos unlike any other time in history.**_

"_**We stand now on the brink of oblivion, as humanity's connection with the elements wanes and drowns—forgotten in the eternally shifting tides of war. You are all the world has left, the Avatar spirit's last ambassador to the world."**_

"_**However, tread lightly, Ambassador. You must exert your might with restraint, for your power and legacy is unlike any of those before you. Your potential for creating sheer, raw devastation is only matched by the ferocity of the entity you hold. You must be wise in the use of such power, lest you tip the world beyond the edge that brinks oblivion."**_

"_**You are not one of us, and you never will be. But you are all we have left. Godspeed, young one!"**_

The screaming winds from the tornado suddenly disappeared, and the darkness parted into light—brilliant, blazing white light that obscured everything.

*****************

_Underground Ruins, Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_4:12 PM_

"…Ugh…"

A tremulous hand slipped onto the shattered earthen floor below and the limp body of a small child collapsed onto the ground, kicking up a small dust cloud that quickly filled the tiny enclosed space.

Dazed gray eyes opened slowly, their stormy depths unfocused as they gazed at the blurry world before them.

He was in some sort of tiny cavern of some sort, as he was entirely surrounded by walls upon walls of broken up rocks and…rubble?

It was some sort of miniature tunnel, walled in on all sides by mountains of shattered debris—fissured concrete, twisted metal, and all—with an enormous Plexiglas cylinder with steel reinforcing supporting the entire underground structure. Over on the far side was something similar to a ramp, formed by jagged metal and busted rock that twisted upward, highlighted by a continuous stream of sunlight that illuminated the tiny place.

He frowned, sweeping the tiny pebbles and dusty soil that had collected on his body.

'_Definitely some kind of ruins'_ he noted, gazing at the twisted sticks of metal that jutted out from the walls.

He stumbled toward the lighted ramp, but a sudden wave of nausea washed over him and his legs gave out—he crumbled once more onto the floor with a weak gasp.

Bile flooded up his throat, and he had no choice but to let it spew out on the ground in front of him. A putrid stench choked the stale air around him and he tore his eyes from the greasy mess, as the remains of the unknown fluid elicited another wave of nausea.

Swearing in frustration, he fumbled around blindly and his hand crashed against something hard and circular—it was that cylinder thing.

Clutching to the cylinder to help lift himself off the ashy floor, he took a glance at the reinforced cylinder and a flash of reflected light off of a silver tag caught his eye.

**Project Avatar: Specimen A4179**

It was embedded in clear, blocky script near the bottom of the cylinder's base.

He traced the imprinted letters with his finger, feeling a hitch catch in his throat as he gazed at the impersonal letters.

'_Specimen A4179…'_

Hadn't he fallen out from something when he woke up? Had it been from this cylinder?

He only had a vague recollection of ashy, debris-littered dirt falling into his mouth before becoming conscious.

He gritted his teeth, trying to remember what had happened…and how he had gotten into his place.

Vague flashes of color flickered in his mind, images of a billowing red cloak collapsed onto asphalt floated into his mind before he felt a vicious jab against his skull—forcing him to abandon his thoughts and grasp his head as the tiny cavern spun nauseatingly, threatening to make him vomit all over the floor again.

'_Who AM I?' _He wondered, as he collapsed onto his knees. He couldn't remember…couldn't remember anything at all.

But the image of large block letters embedded into unforgiving steel haunted his thoughts. The numbers and letters were swirling in his mind, and they began to rearrange themselves in the darkness behind his eyelids.

…_Specimen A4179…_

…_A4179…_

…_Aa179…_

…_Aan9…_

…_Aang._

Blazing blue eye sockets slammed open.

*****************

_District 51, Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_4:26 PM_

Toph jerked her head up, suddenly snapping to attention as her usual laid back demeanor completely evaporated.

Wiping a stray smear of ketchup from her lips, Toph leapt off her plastic stool and slid out the door of the fast food restaurant, abandoning her surprisingly delicious meal of overly salted fries and a greasy cheeseburger.

She walked out onto the city sidewalk, taking care to avoid several glass shards from a beer bottle lying on the floor, and took a deep breath, tuning out the pervasive cacophony of city life—that nigh omnipresent sound of chattering conversations and rumbling automobiles.

She stretched her vibration sight to its very limits, painting a picture of her environment with the sonar pulsations of the urban jungle around her. A myriad of vibrations assaulted her feet—the intermittent beatings of a million human hearts pulsating at their own rhythm, the heavy tremble caused by a hundred cars lining up on the streets, the stomping of shoes against concrete and asphalt, the splattering of a spilled drink, the screaming of machinery in the nearby factories, and…there!

And tiny, gentle vibrations—like the sound of a silver wind chime ringing gently in an utterly silent room.

That was the curious sensation she had sensed before, a vibration so light that it seemed almost alien in a world full of stomping feet and grating steel. Once she isolated it, its gentle tempo stood out alarmingly, like the ringing of a cell phone in the middle of a movie—easily overwhelmed by the sound of the theatre but, once heard, unmistakable.

And it pulled at her very soul, a forceful tug that had dragged her off of her stool and into the dirty street without her realizing. Something about the noise had been so rejuvenating and familiar that it raised her spirits and demanded her absolute attention.

Maybe it was even the strange drive that had pulled her out of her home in the first place.

_Twink. Twinkle._

'_Footsteps?'_ She wondered, curious at how those footsteps could be so…light, even gentler than the tender _pitter-patter_ of feet usually made by small children or drizzle against the grass.

Despite her initial misgivings about the filthy city, Toph was quickly finding that the broken city of Omashu had its own hidden gems.

Well, more like diamonds in the rough, really.

'_Like those french fries or whatever they're called' _she thought, not realizing the hungry smile that had over taken her lips at the thought.

Toph shook her head, she was getting distracted too easily —she needed to hurry up and find whoever was making that sound.

But still, this was definitely one of diamonds—one of the things that were helping her feel like this trip was actually worth the effort.

The vibration pulsed again, and she took off at a run, a sense of insatiable curiosity driving her forward and boredom burning the bridges behind her.

"…_Come, walk with me…"_

*****************

_District 51, Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_4:30 PM_

Aang wiped the stray traces of dust that still clung to his head, even after all this time, and sighed in boredom as he sat on a metal bench by a bus stop, watching warily as cars of all shapes and sizes rolled by on the street before him.

He didn't know what it was, but _something_ about the city—with its rough asphalt streets, towering skyscrapers that shadowed the streets like a gathering of titans, and the heavy blanket of smog and pollution that hazed the air—made him uneasy.

It was…a serious case of déjà vu. He had been here before, or at least to a place very much like this—a place with looming skyscrapers, sandpaper asphalt roads, and choking black smog.

Lots of choking black smog…or had it been smoke?

Split second visions of a red cloak—singed, torn, and blackened—blossomed in his mind for a brief second before a vicious, pulsating headache thrust itself into his head.

Aang grabbed his bald head, trying to massage it to ease the sudden pain, and growled in frustration.

_Every single time._

_Every damn time_ that he tried to remember what happened to him before he woke up in that little junkyard of shattered concrete and twisted metal, it felt like he just smashed headfirst into a brick wall.

A stranger nonchalantly passed by him, a tall young man simply moving by as if unaware of Aang's existence. Even so, a thrill of fear and paranoia clutched at his body, and Aang barely held himself from panicking.

It was only after the stranger disappeared from sight, his form obscured in this distance by the faint shroud of smog that covered the area, that Aang could relax again.

It was unnerving, this city. There was something about it that, even in broad daylight, set his teeth on edge.

In this city, wavering shadows in the bright sunlight took form and became hulking demons, innocent bystanders became shambling corpses of the walking dead or insidiously disguised assassins, and even the very earth beneath him felt like a bleeding sore—as if the ground below had been cleaved open and infected with pollution until it was just a pulsating, bleeding bruise that squished at every step.

Aang shivered, he was definitely losing it—he needed to get out of here _quickly_.

Just as it passed in his thoughts, a bus growled its way up the road and swung its doors wide open, letting Aang slip out of the grimy air that tainted the city streets.

*****************

Closer.

The gentle whisper of the unique footsteps breezed across the ground again and Toph charged at it in a dead run—she was _still too far away_.

She could feel the gentle shuffle, and its accompanying footsteps, vanish into the hulking frame of a rumbling bus just as the vibrations her feet picked up painted a picture of a thin, slender figure of a person probably around her own age.

"Wait!" she cried, stretching an arm toward the bus, and heaving a relieved sigh when it waited for her approach.

Toph raced all the way up to the bus stop, her hair slipping out of its bun and flying everywhere as she jumped through the open doorway and onto the bus.

Bad idea.

"A—Aaah!!"

Toph made a noise somewhere between a squeak and a yelp when her world, usually so brilliantly illuminated by the whispering vibrations of the earth, went dark.

Completely, utterly dark.

Crap.

Her foot slid on surface she couldn't see and, suddenly, she was falling through the air, in a sea of darkness that she couldn't see through. Slipping into an abyss she couldn't perceive the bottom of.

'_The fricking bus is made of metal! Duh! Why hadn't I realized that earlier?'_

_Clasp._

Toph found herself suspended in the air, hanging only by a gentle but firm hand clasped on her shoulder.

"Hey, you okay?" said a disembodied voice, ringing out in the darkness. It was a light tenor voice, definitely male but quite young—probably around her age, she concluded.

Toph righted herself, trying to gather together the last scraps of her dignity, and brushed off the offending hand.

"I'm _fine._"

She wobbled around anxiously, reaching out and managing to grab hold onto a metal bar by sheer luck—which she then clung to like a life line.

Her efforts were ruined, however, when the bus pitched forward as it moved ahead once more and the motion crushed her against the pole, painfully.

Damn it. This _sucked. _

It was even worse than the subway. At least, there, she could just stand up and let herself be swept up by the river of people shuffling toward the entrance and exit. All she had to do, then, was to listen for her stop.

Again, the same calm hand rested gently on her shoulder as the person's other hand gently pried her hands from their death grip on the pole.

"Hey, come on…let me help you sit down."

The young voice echoed out in the darkness soothingly even as Toph tried to pull her hands from his grip.

Toph struggled against the tight grip his hands had on hers, her own pride absolutely refusing to compromise for anything less than complete independence. However, when the bus jerked up with a loud crash from a speed bump on the road, bile rose in her throat and Toph let the youth gently push her into a seat.

An invisible seat in the middle of an equally invisible world. It was a forlorn sensation, worse than being marooned on an island in the middle of nowhere.

She felt a small air displacement beside her, indicating the youth had taken a seat next to her.

'_This is humiliating' _she thought, even as a shameful blush spread over her cheeks. Never before had she needed such help from anyone, much less a _complete stranger_.

She hated, now more than ever, her blindness and the _stupid idiot _who was trying to help her.

She turned and glared at where she thought he would be,

"What do you want?" she demanded, her red face twisting into a scowl.

*****************

Aang watched in fascination as the dark haired girl _burned_ the empty seat next to him with a _vicious_ death glare.

He leaned forward, gazing into those oddly glazed eyes so full of frustration and anger.

'_Hmm, I wonder…'_ Aang thought, musing over an idea that suddenly popped into his head.

He reached out with his arm and waved his hand frantically over the girl's eyes, watching expectantly as they didn't even blink in the slightest and remained glaring at an empty seat.

'_Yep,' _He concluded, _'She's blind, that explains why she was having trouble walking earlier.'_

But still, it didn't explain how she was able to run earlier…

"Well?!"

Oh. Right. She was still talking to him. He really should stop getting distracted so easily.

He shrugged, despite knowing that she wouldn't be able to see it anyway

"I just wanted to help you, that's all."

The blind girl before him scowled menacingly, somehow even more pissed off than before—although Aang had no idea how. He was just being nice, no need to get all ticked off…

"I _don't need_ your help!" She growled, obviously offended by the suggestion that she needed help.

Aang sighed; well, _somebody_ was a little sensitive…

"I didn't say you did. I helped you because…well, it felt like the right thing to do." He said, fumbling for an answer that he hoped would appease the dark haired girl next to him.

The slender but wiry girl growled, taking a wild swing at in the dark—completely missing him, but she got her point across.

"I don't want your damn _pity!_" She spat, her already agitated face twisting up in a mixture of rage and humiliation at her vulnerability. She couldn't even hit him! _Damn it!_

'_By the Spirits,' _Aang grumbled mentally, _'I can't win with this woman at all, can I?'_

"No, no! That's not what I meant!" Aang soothed, trying to cool his companion's volcanic temper, "What I meant was…um, uhh…like—have you ever gone for a midnight snack even though you weren't hungry?"

She just blinked, giving him a weird look, _'What does that have to do with anything?'_

"Uh, yea? I guess I have…" The girl trailed off, not really knowing where he was going with this.

"It's kinda like that. You're not hungry, so it's not like you _need_ to get a snack—but you still get this urge, you know? So you eat it, and suddenly you feel much better."

"…"

Silence.

Aang tittered nervously, his mouth deciding to blabber on in small chance that he would potentially say something that would save him.

"That was why I wanted to help you, and it wasn't like you needed it or anything—it's just like, I needed to get my snack and, err—"

'_What the heck am I even saying?'_

She burst out laughing in the middle of his sentence, loud, raucously infectious laughter that echoed in the enclosed space of the bus and gathered them more than a few irritated looks from the rest of the passengers.

Aang couldn't help but laugh with her, and their laughter harmonized in the metal confines of the bus—unmindful of the obnoxious glares they were attracting.

She settled down after a while, and gave him a cocky grin,

"You're an idiot, you know that?"

Aang smiled back at her, forgetting that she couldn't see it

"Oh, thanks…" he said, amusedly.

They quieted into a comfortable silence, only broken by the constant rumbling of the engine that roared every time the driver accelerated.

"Soo…where are you going?" Aang said conversationally.

Toph blinked. She opened her mouth to answer, but closed it before anything could come out.

Where _was_ she going? What was she going to say? That she had only jumped on the bus because she'd felt those _weird_ footsteps going into the bus?

Yeah, like that would go over well.

Toph faked an arrogant sniff in the air and crossed her arms,

"It's none of your business" she said airily, mockingly fanning herself

Aang chuckled at her impression, a lighthearted sound that plastered an involuntary smile on Toph's face as well.

"Well,_ I'm _going to the Metrorail actually, so I can get out of the city."

The gentle words slipped from his mouth and into her ears, but all Toph could hear was a symphony of melding words that became a seductive whisper echoing into her head.

_Freedom._

Toph perked up, her body suddenly sitting on the edge of her seat.

"Oh? Why?"

"I…I don't know, really. Something about this city puts me on edge. It's…kind of like I've been here before, but it really isn't a good feeling. I really don't want to be here."

Toph frowned thoughtfully. Now that he mentioned it, something about the city _did_ make her…wary. She didn't know if it was the poisoned air, or just the filth the littered the streets of Omashu, but something about the city seemed threatening—as if she was constantly being watched.

Toph was unable to suppress a shiver at that thought.

"_**Arriving at: Oma Metrorail Station."**_

Aang jumped to his feet at the announcement of their arrival at the Metrorail Station, but then hesitated as he looked at the girl beside him.

Aang shook his head, why was he feeling so conflicted? He needed to leave this city immediately, his intuition was practically screaming at him at this point. But, as he gazed down at the lonely blind girl now sitting all alone, he couldn't help but feel a powerful wave of regret tugging at his heart.

"That's…this is my stop, I should go."

Toph cringed; she hadn't thought that they would eventually have to part ways so soon. She clenched her fists, feeling as if a part of her heart had just been brutally torn from her chest, as she tried to scramble for words to say, but nothing understandable came out.

"A—Ah, I…Er…"

The sound of footsteps in the bus rose and faded.

Toph sat there, alone once more in the darkness of the iron bus—utterly blind and isolated once again from the rest of the world.

'_Wait…What am I doing?!'_ she thought, _'What was the point of running away from home? It…it was…'_

'_It was to find a friend, to be able to live a normal life. I have a chance at making a friend now, if I take the opportunity. What am I doing giving that up? Rock-like, Toph!'_

"WAIT!!" Toph cried, jumping to her feet.

She stumbled blindly in the impenetrable darkness, wildly swinging her arms in hopes of trying to touch something—touch _anything_ in the endless void that was her world.

Nothing came, nothing material touched her grasping fingers and despair struck her like a harsh blow across the face.

Was she too late? Had he already left?

_Clasp._

"_Hey, what's wrong?"_

Toph grinned in relief, basking momentarily in the sound of her companion's voice as she clung desperately to his arm.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

She could feel his pulse through his smooth skin, a pulse light and rapid like the gentle flutter of the wings of a small bird taking flight. It was so much different from the heavy pounding pulses of everyone else in this city, their hearts weighed down by their own burdens until their hearts sounded like the heavy beating of a drum.

Wait. What was she doing?

_Pull yourself together, Toph Bei Fong!_

The blind earthbender jumped off his arm as if it had suddenly caught fire, her blind eyes and isolated feet completely oblivious to the heavy blush and awkward grin that had overtaken Aang's features.

Toph stuttered, trying to pull together the shattered scraps of her mind and her dignity together to form a coherent sentence.

"I, uh…erm, just…_I just remembered that this was my stop too_!" she exclaimed, the last part of her statement flying out so fast that it was practically just a blur of sound.

Aang blinked, taking a moment to just _try_ and decipher the gibberish that had flown from those lips of hers.

"Oh. Right! Okay, then! Come on, let's go!" he said, excitement filling his voice as he dragged his friend, _his first friend_, with him.

"Hey! Wait! What're you doing?!" Toph said, her energy draining away as her voice took a dangerous edge.

"What? I'm just trying to help you!"

"HEY! I told you that I don't _NEED he—!"_

Toph blinked her wide eyes in confusion; bewildered when a gentle finger pushed against her lips, silencing her

"I know you don't…" came the quiet whisper.

"…But it's what friends do, they help each other even when they don't need it."

Toph flushed crimson beneath his finger, _'Friends…we're friends…' _

She finally found what she was looking for, her first friend.

*****************

_The City Limits of Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_4:43 PM_

A tall man dressed in sunglasses, a formal dark suit, and slacks stood alone in a darkened alley of the outer reaches of the city, looking entirely out of place from the rest of his environment. The alley was littered with all sorts of miscellaneous garbage and its walls were adorned by a bulbous mass of obscene graffiti painted in bright, lurid colors.

The dark haired man stood there silently, a lone sentinel watching the Shu Metrorail station on the other side of the street.

A flash of green and a flutter of dark hair emerged from the station, accompanied by another child he was not informed of.

The man reached into his pocket, withdrawing a cell phone, and quietly dialed a number.

…

"Sir. I've found the girl."

…Unintelligible mutterings from the phone whispered in the alleyway.

"Green shirt, black shorts. She's accompanied by a boy, around her age, orange shirt, black pants, and a yellow jacket—"

Rapid mutterings from the phone cut him off, the sound harsh and rather high-pitched.

"No sir, I can't identify the boy, she must have just met him."

…

"They've just exited the Shu Metrorail, sir. They're heading due west, taking Bumi Avenue. At this rate, they'll probably reach the city limits in half an hour."

…

"Yes, sir."

The man slipped out of the alley, into the open walkway by the street, and allowed himself to get absorbed into a crowd of similarly dressed professionals, all the while surreptitiously shadowing the two children up ahead.

*****************

Aang smiled as he watched his new friend—Toph, she had said her name was—chatter at him from the corner of his eye.

Toph was special, he didn't know how exactly but somehow it was almost obvious. There was something about her that was…_different_ from anyone he had met before—although, that was an admittedly short list, considering he had awoken up in a dump or ruins of some sort with no memories whatsoever.

But, still.

Whereas everything else he'd met in Omashu immediately caused his hackles to rise or his palms to perspire with a cold sweat, being around Toph was…relaxing. She was fiercely independent and powerfully driven; she did whatever she wanted the way she wanted to do it, and that kind of blasé confidence was infectious.

Despite their rocky beginning, Aang felt truly at ease with her, laughing along and joking…As if she was merely an old friend, returning from a long trip at a far-off country and they were just catching up with each other.

There were a few things he still wondered about though; like how Toph, being the volatile and easily offended person she was, could handle being blind when she clearly interpreted anything anyone did to 'help' her as being a severe insult and thus in need of a severe beating.

'_Sheer stubbornness'_, Aang guessed as he rubbed the bruises starting to form on his arm, '_something Toph has in spades.'_

'_No wonder she seemed to be constantly pissed off. It must be infuriating'_, he mused, _'to be continually patronized by the people around you, when all you want is to be independent.'_

"Hey, Twinkletoes—"

Aang shivered gently, his eyes fluttering closed.

He couldn't help it. It felt so…_familiar_. It felt _right_ for her to call him that.

—_Twinkletoes. _

_There was a cloudless blue sky was above him, and a thorny bramble of branches underneath._

_He was lying on it, and…who was that above him?_

_Dark hair, pale green eyes._

_Was it…_

"_What are you doing here, Twinkletoes?" An authoritative voice demanded of him._

"_Don't answer to Twinkletoes! It's not manly!" _

…_Toph?—_

**WHAM.**

"**Twinkletoes!! **Have you even been paying attention?!"

Aang groaned from his position of having his face planted into the asphalt.

He shuddered on the ground, trying to pull himself up as he felt Toph's glare burning into the back of his head. She seized him from the back on his shirt and pulled him to feet.

Aang moaned in pain at the abuse, his face still reeling from the impact.

"Serves you right for day dreaming on me." She said, crossing her arms unrepentantly as if he had mortally offended her.

Aang clutched his head tearfully, "Did you really have to hit me so hard?" he whined.

"Yep." Her face was characteristically unyielding.

As they continued to traverse down the jilted sidewalk, the signs of the dissipating became evident with every step. Where goliath high-rises once overshadowed the city streets and steeped most of the city in perpetual shade, the streets and plazas were now surrounded by smaller two-story buildings built of humble concrete and wooden frames instead of soaring metal frames and tinted glass.

The pervasive stench of human waste was beginning to fade from the air, and the hazy smog of pollution that cloaked the industrial sectors of the city thinned at the edges of the urban metropolis. Roads and sidewalks, once smooth from constant maintenance, were now broken up and cracking as little plants and shoots took root on the man-made rock and broke it open.

The road was relatively empty, compared to the steady hustle and bustle in the center of Omashu, but something about the sparse crowd seemed a little off…

Toph turned her head slightly to the side, a useless gesture born out of habit rather than practicality.

_Thump. Tha-Thump. Thump._

There it was again. The same heartbeat.

Toph casually slung an arm around Aang's shoulders, pulling his body against her own and ignoring Aang's startled reaction.

'_What the—?'_ Aang practically jumped off the ground in fear and surprise when Toph pulled him against her.

She turned her head gently against his cheek, her whispering breath tickling his ear and sending shivers down his spine. Aang only stared in shock at her face, only now realizing that Toph was rather pretty—with her fine porcelain features, those lighted jade eyes, and the inky black bangs that framed her face.

But, as pleasant as it was having her close, it terrified him that she was _right there_. Being around Toph was a lesson in _pain_ and it would be _so_ easy for her to inflict her own brand of affection on him at this proximity.

Toph was scary…

"Twinkles, we're being followed."

'_Followed?'_

With that, Aang's anxiety about Toph's proximity faded away, replaced by worry and a harsh onset of paranoia.

Aang tensed in anticipation, and looked over his shoulder warily, '_Where are they? Is there going to be a fight? Or are they just watching us?'_

Toph squeezed his shoulder, her adroit fingers digging into the tense muscle.

"Relax, Twinkletoes. We don't want to tip them off just yet."

The scream of skidding wheels rung through the sparsely occupied streets, followed by a roaring rumble of firing engines as a fleet of cars suddenly turned into the street corner and whizzed past them, sending Aang's heart rate skyrocketing in anticipation.

This situation was becoming too dangerous.

Detaching itself from the fleet of cars just passing them by, a silver Mercedes rolled up beside them, parking itself by sidewalk and just behind them. Aang and Toph turned around to look at them, trying to be as non-threatening as possible, as four suited men emerged from its cabin, each identical in their formal suits, dark slacks, and black sunglasses.

One of the men took a step forward, a dark-skinned man with a bulky, muscular frame visible even through his three-piece suit.

"Ms. Bei Fong, your father has been looking for you since your disappearance. Please come with us, we will escort you back home."

Toph took one glance at the four menacing men and took off at a run, racing down the sidewalk and leaving everyone else behind.

In that second, Aang's mind whirled to sort its priorities, storing the detail that Toph had run from home for later, and settling one on thought.

_Enemies._

The four men rushed to apprehend her but, just as they came within an arm's length of Aang, time seemed to slow down, and everything was suddenly crawling at a snail's pace. The world around him seem to blend all into one motion, one in unity and he was suddenly aware of just exactly where the four men were standing, and the distance between him and Toph.

Aang blinked.

The cityscape around him spun into a blur as his body obeyed commands that were not his own. He was suddenly watching himself as his body shifted into a fighting stance and delivered a crushing blow to the lead man's abdomen—sending him flying across the street in an explosive rush of air.

The other three men reacted immediately, moving to engage him, and Aang saw them move almost sluggishly to withdraw a small handheld double-pronged device. At the flick of a switch, the twin prongs sizzled with such a powerful electrifying energy that Aang felt he would be able to pinpoint them even with his eyes closed.

He had never seen such a device before, but his mind already knew what they were.

Tasers.

Electrocution. They were going to subdue Toph via electrocution.

His mind briefly flashed with the mental image of Toph screaming on the floor in agony as hundreds of volts of electricity razed through her tiny body.

A furious, righteous rage boiled up in Aang veins, his blood seemingly turned into liquid magma as he found himself sliding into the midst of his enemies, smashing one man into the lamp pole with a roundhouse kick that roared like the crashing of thunder as rushing air came screaming out from his limbs.

_These were scum._

He slid onto the ground, the momentum from the roundhouse kick sliding him out the way of a potentially crippling jab from a taser, and kicked the man's feet out from beneath him before smashing the suited man into the ground with a brutal thrust of his elbow to the face, the force of the blow even tearing up the concrete on the other side of the man's head.

_No mercy._

The fourth man came at him much more hesitantly than the rest, wary after watching the others brutally subdued with little effort. The suited man attacked him with short, quick jabs of his taser but Aang just seized his hand, twisting the wrist until he could feel the gentle bone structures in the arm twisting, breaking, and shattering from the strain, before slugging the man in the face and sending him flying down the street.

"You idiot!"

Toph's familiar voice pierced through the crimson haze of fury that had settled over his vision and Aang found himself emerging out of the primal mentality that had fallen on him.

A small hand reached out from behind him, grabbed at his arm, and dragged down the street at a full blown sprint—leaving the crumpled forms of the four men behind.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were an Airbender?"

—"_Why didn't you tell us you were the Avatar?"—_

Aang shook his head, pushing away the odd whisper that had hissed in ear at the question.

His mouth formed an 'o' in surprise, _'An airbender…? Is…Is that what that was?'_

Airbender…the word—it sounded right, as if the very word was purposely formed to express the essence of that _freedom, _that _power_, that _fluidity_ that had filled his body and taken a life of its own.

Toph was still glaring at him as they ran down the street, her blind eyes miraculously meeting his own. Her eyes were shining, almost glassy.

_Is…is she…?_

"_Come on_,Aang! Don't you know? You can't Bend in public! That's practically _begging _for theDai Li to come swarming in—especially when you do it in the middle of a major city, _in broad daylight!_"

_The Dai Li._

'_Why does that sound so familiar?'_

"You can't Bend in Omashu, and you _definitely _can't Bend in Ba Sing Se. The Dai Li are _everywhere_, Aang, and they _always know_. If you get caught Bending by _anyone_, no one ever sees you again."

"And you just _airbended_, Aang. We need to get out of here. Now."

'_We?'_

Aang's eyes widened and his feet slowed in hesitation, prompting Toph to give him a rough tug that dragged him into a full sprint again.

"Toph, what are you talking about? We? Aren't they only after me, Toph? You…you don't need to go with me—"

The raven haired girl sprinting just a few steps in front of him gave an impatient sigh.

"Shut up, Twinkletoes. You're not going to get rid of me _that_ easily. Get this through your head, Twinkles, because I'm only going to say this once. I'm going with you, whether you like it or not."

"But—!"

"_AND_, you're going to _appreciate _it! Because, you're so _freaking_ clueless that you decided to _broadcast_ your Bending to _everyone in Omashu_! Where have you been living, Twinkletoes? Under a rock?"

"Weelll, _actually_—"

"—You _need _me, Twinkles—admit it."

Aang only smiled through her obstinate rant, wondering what he had ever done to deserve such a loyal friend that she would throw everything away just for his sake. It was both heartwarming and heart crushing, joy at his first friend's declaration of loyalty, but agony—agony for her, agony that she would be losing everything for him, just worthless him.

"…Thanks, Toph…" Aang whispered, his voice carrying gently into her ears as the last vestiges of his anger washed away into happiness.

"Don't thank me just yet, Twinkles! We're not out of the fire yet!"

And indeed, they weren't.

The duo had almost reached the city limits, and the sidewalk was already beginning to crumble into white dust under their feet, but the road had split into a large, open area containing a four-way stop.

Six silver Mercedes cars barricaded the other three roadsides, two cars per road, and effectively cut off any chance of a quick escape. The glossy, silver doors were swinging open and muscular dark suited men were emerging from the cars in groups of four, crowding the perimeter with hard-jawed and emotionless visages. As one, each and every one of them reached into their jackets and pulled out a double-pronged device.

Aang tried to imitate his previous fighting stance but, now that he was consciously trying, he realized he had no idea what to do.

The silence stretched out dramatically, as both parties stared each other down, waiting for their opponents to make the first move.

Toph scowled. She preferred to wait for her opponents to make the first move to reveal deficiencies and weaknesses in their style, but they didn't have time to just sit around in Omashu.

And they had been effectively blockaded by the Bei Fong guards. There was no running from this confrontation, and she was rather _die_ first than be the damsel in distress and let a little girl like Twinkletoes take them all on.

"Che. Pansies."

'_Well, if Twinkles here is going to be Wanted by the Dai Li…Heh, I can't let a little girl like him show me up!"_

**Stomp. Crush.**

Toph lifted a single foot and crushed it against the ground, dragging much of the dirt with it.

The earth beneath the battlefield rumbled and rolled, throwing everyone except for Toph off balance. A sudden burst of kinetic energy rolled into the asphalt, tearing it up like toilet paper, as enormous shockwaves roared from her Toph's foot like the epicenter of an earthquake.

The men burst into action, trying charge at them despite the ground rolling beneath them as their devices sizzled with electricity.

For a split second, Aang saw, instead of the dark suited figures charging at him, the silhouettes of fully armed military men highlighted against a background of a furious explosion that painted the sky black with choking ash and smoke. He heard the sharp crackling report of gunfire in the muffled air, and the grunting of thousands of other men on the floor—in various states of fatal conditions.

The asphalt on the ground had been torn up beyond repair, and the once towering skyscrapers reduced to mere rubble and charcoaled ash. He saw a figure robed in crimson, kneeling on a particularly seared patch of broken rock.

—'_Brother!'—_

He blinked and shook his head, the vision dispelling as soon as it came.

Aang found himself sliding into a wide footed stance and whirled into a powerful roundhouse kick that sliced the air—forcing out an explosive wave of violent wind that sent the men flying backwards and smashing onto the concrete sidewalks and the rough asphalt roads.

A collective groan sounded from the men has they tried to stumble to their feet, only to be knocked down by another explosion.

The underground turbulence had reached to its peak, and the ground beneath the blockade of cars burst into an explosion of roaring earth, shattering the make-shift barricade as it crushed the cars into limp piles of debris and shattered metal as well as blasting everyone in the vicinity with a shower of jagged rock shards.

For a moment, the battleground was covered in a smokescreen formed by a cloud of airborne dirt and rock. When it cleared, Aang noted that all of their opponents were lying on the floor, in various states of injury, as they all collectively moaned in pain.

Toph struck the air with one hand, bending the earth under the men to rise up and encase their limbs in large casts of stone.

"Come on, Twinkles!"

She grabbed his hand, and they finally broke past the city limits and into the mountainous wilderness beyond the city of Omashu.

*****************

_Friday, May 24__th__, 3021_

_Beneath Lake Laogai, Beyond the Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se, Earth Kingdom_

_6:56 PM_

A tall, black haired and balding man with a braided beard sat at his desk, a fine construction from the most expensive wood there was to be found in Ba Sing Se and emblazoned with decorations in the purest, most refined gold. He was dressed in a stately dark green robe with gold cuffs and an Earth Kingdom symbol imprinted onto its back.

His office was a room entirely coated in stainless steel, with its walls were littered with posted notes, papers, and reminders of all kinds. In the background of the room was an enormous virtual map of the Earth Kingdom that helped illuminate the room.

The man was at his desk filing out several papers for a report to the Earth King, when another man, dressed in a similarly dark green robe and a large green Li that obscured his face, entered the room.

"Report." The balding man said, not bothering to look up from his work.

A manila folder was pushed onto the desk, careful not to disrupt or smear any of the drying calligraphy on the formal papers.

"At approximately 4:50 this afternoon, two Bender signals were located in the city of Omashu, less than a mile off the eastern city limits. They've been identified as powerful earthbender and airbender signals. The surrounding area was dealt a surprising amount of devastation in a rather short period of time, but it is nothing a team of earthbenders can't fix in a short while."

The seated man quirked up an eyebrow in curiosity.

A rogue earthbender in Omashu? Quite the rarity these days, considering how extensive the information system held by the Dai Li. Not much got past them, especially not in the way of Bender potentials going unnoticed, but the occasional rogue Bender wasn't unheard of.

He opened the folder, scanning its detailed contents along with the clips of several high quality photos of the devastation wrecked into the area, as well as some more photos of the Benders themselves.

The Man stopped listening for a second, his gaze suddenly focused on the tiny earthbender girl for a brief moment.

She looked familiar, _very _familiar.

"Our surveillance cameras and sentries in the area have identified one of the perpetrators, the earthbender, but the airbender is a virtual unknown to all of our databases." The Agent continued, not noticing his superior's growing impatience.

"Well?" Was the curt reply.

"The earthbender has been identified as the sole daughter of the Bei Fong family, I'm certain you're quite familiar with them."

That made sense. The Bei Fongs were an elite family, one of the richest in the Earth Kingdom, and it would be child's play for Lao to just bribe the doctors and nurses into silence. If any family could get away with concealing their child's earthbending, it would certainly be the Bei Fong family.

Which also explained why Lao had been so insistant on holding onto his, _oh so valuable_ 'privacy'

The balding man leaned back on his chair and laughed uproariously, his mind whirling even as he laughed at the irony.

"You mean the blind little girl that they've been trying to hide from us for over thirteen years?" he asked to confirm, an amused grin gracing his features.

"The very same."

The bearded man stroked his braided beard, _'Oh, Lao. You've tried so hard to keep your little one from us, only for her to run away and help blow up part of a city block of Omashu in broad daylight.'_

'_It is quiet curious, though…What other secrets are you hiding from us, Lao, my friend?'_

Pushing aside his momentary curiosity, he turned his attention to more important matters. Something about this airbender rubbed him the wrong way.

"Tell me what we have about the airbender."

The Agent shook his head, "Just about nothing, sir. The child is a virtual unknown. Prior to today, his face has never been recorded in any of our surveillance cameras as well as any of our formal documentations. He has no birth certificate, no social security number—nothing. For all intents and purposes, he doesn't exist. The little that we have are just records of his travels around the city earlier today."

The balding man scowled thoughtfully, _'An unknown has existed for this long without us knowing? It is possible that the Earth Kingdom has been infiltrated then…but why by the Air Nomads? They've made themselves perfectly clear that they have never interested themselves in war, or even espionage. Could this be some sort of taunt, or something completely unrelated?'_

"I presume that you have accounted for the possibility of him being a spy or military agent, and then discarded it?"

"Yes, sir. No self-respecting infiltrator would reveal himself like that in broad daylight."

Which made the dilemma even more curious.

How could a civilian remain completely undetected for even one day? The Dai Li had virtually every street corner of every city in the Earth Kingdom stocked with sentries and observers watching for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

They had every mode of communications tapped, observed and recorded. They had a thorough personal file and information sheet on almost every single inhabitant breathing in the Earth Kingdom. For Spirit's sake, it was even _legally_ required for communications manufacturers to _include_ a recording device to their products.

_And_ the satellites which managed communications recorded every single conversation, which was then forwarded to the Dai Li.

There was no way the boy could have simply appeared in the middle of street like he did, you had to be born in Omashu or enter Omashu in order to exist in Omashu.

Unless…

"Sir Long Feng?" asked the Agent, slightly unnerved by the silence that had fallen on the room.

The bearded man hushed him.

But, that was impossible. All records and witnesses had testified that the subject had been administered the lethal injection…

And even if it was a dud and the injection was faked, the subject would have been buried under a mountain of broken concrete and twisted metal for three years now. Three years crushed under a ton of debris with no food, no water, and no oxygen to breathe.

However, this was still too much of a coincidence for it to be overlooked. He would just have to make sure, run a test perhaps…

He had always suspected that the fool, Gyatso, had been hiding something, after all.

Long Feng glared at the agent standing in front of him, all vestiges of amusement or friendliness disappearing in place of cold determination and cruel calculation.

"Agent 009, please order a dispatch of the best Strikers we have on standby. It will be a Highly Classified Retrieval mission. Their orders are to capture, and capture only, the boy and the Bei Fong girl, by any reasonable means possible. They must not kill either of them."

The Agent raised his head in shock,

"But, sir! You know the Strikers aren't trained for Retrieval missions!"

Long Feng gave him a frigid smile.

"I know. Make sure they aggravate the boy as much as possible; they may resort to harming the Bei Fong girl, if necessary. I simply must check something."

The Agent blinked at probably the oddest set of orders he had ever received, but he bowed his head subserviently.

"Yes, sir."

He turned to leave to the office but was stopped by Long Feng before he could exit.

"Oh, and bring me all the files relating to Project Avatar while you're at it."


	3. Hunted in the Darkness

_Saturday, May 25__th__, 3021_

_The Wilderness North-East of Omashu, Earth Kingdom_

_11:12 AM_

Entrenched within the arms of an enormous mountain range littered with a mass gathering of thick forestry was a curvaceous, winding path that sliced its way through the dense trees. The earth was rough and gravelly throughout the region, but especially so at the worn path wrapped in the boughs of overhanging trees and pervasive branches—constant use of the trail had hewn sharp scars into the land and crushed any of Nature's attempts to retake the soil.

Vibrating carpets of life and their vivacious sounds abounded the environment, omnipresent and enchanting in the eternal symphony of the natural world. Birds and small animal life twittered and cried from their unseen perches, their individual sounds blending together like an orchestra of nature.

Towering above them all, titanic mountains hovered even higher in the distance, their jagged peaks stretched up beyond the cover of the clouds and into the heavens themselves. Their weathered visages were testaments to the obstinate nature of stone as they stood proudly even after the ravages of time and the elements.

She could feel it.

She could feel every single breath of air taken in by the animals around her, the pounding of tiny hearts, swift and furious as they engaged in the eternal struggle for the right to exist. For all the peaceful tranquility imbued into their surroundings, she could feel the fierce undercurrents of the most ancient of all competitions thrumming on the earth beneath her feet.

This was _freedom_. True freedom.

Not the festering sore of pollution and degradation that the corrupted city of Omashu had presented her. Nor was it the forcefully tamed and subdued nature, brutalized by human hands, which had visited her in the gardens of her home in Gaoling.

It was _wild_, untamed, and unfettered—just as how she always longed to be.

She smiled, a simple expression that struggled to express the triumphant exhilaration rushing through her.

All because of him, the little fleet-footed curiosity that lagged behind her.

Toph cocked her head curiously, her victorious smile morphing into an impish grin.

'_Come to think of it…He's kinda slow.'_ She thought, reaching her senses behind her and trying to sense her distant companion.

_Pound. Pound. Pound._

The flicker of a branch—shoved aside, discarded, disposed of…

The swift, blazing path of sprinting feet, a zephyr treading up a cloud of loose dust into the air.

Panting.

Harsh panting.

…

"Stop lazing around and HURRY UP, Twinkle Toes!"

_Huff Puff. Huff Puff._

An irritated glare of gray eyes burning against a figure dressed in green and black.

"I _am_, Toph! Maybe you should _slow down_ a bit!"

A disgusted snort emitted from the figure running ahead at a steady, rapid pace, followed by a sarcastic retort.

"Me? _Slow down?_ Weren't you the one complaining about going too slowly earlier? Or is this _blind little girl_ too much for you?"

Aggravated grinding of teeth.

"…Yea, well…It's not _my_ fault I didn't know where you wanted to go! You never told me!"

A devious smirk fluttered across those pink lips as Toph turned her head back at the lagging figure behind her, with his face sweating bullets and a blazing heat emitting like an aura around him.

"Hehehe, it's not my fault you airbenders finish up so fast, _quickshot_."

A stunned, disbelieving silence, broken only by the steady pounding of feet against rock.

"Wha—Was…wait, uh, I—w-w-WHAT?"

Aang felt like he could die of embarrassment right there, he could feel the steaming blood shooting up his head and making him rather faint. _'Quickshot? Is she…Did she really just SAY that?'_

Toph slowed to a stop in front of him, gifting him with a sly smile that tried—but failed—to look even slightly innocent. Aang quickly caught up to her and leaned heavily on a nearby tree, desperately trying to catch his breath.

"_What?_ I was just saying that you took off sprinting so fast and burned out, you gotta pace yourself better, you know?…" She said, lifting her hands in a mockery of innocence.

A mischievous grin suddenly burst out at those lips, revealing pearly teeth that seemed to gleam menacingly in the broad, late morning light.

"…Or did you think I was saying something _else_, hmm, Twinkle Toes?"

She leaned in accusingly, her mischeivous eyes gleaming with repressed laughter.

"A—uh…erm—Aa-err…"

Toph snickered, this kid was pure _gold_. He was so _easy_; she'd never heard anything's heartbeat pulsate so rapidly in her entire life.

Aang was speechless, his mind had just been completely blown to pieces and he couldn't muster anything up to say anymore. He could feel his head getting even hotter, if that was possible at this point, until it felt like his head was a blazing furnace.

Toph waited for Aang's response as he began to calm down but Aang remained too flustered to even attempt to muster a response and the silence stretched out awkwardly between the two friends as they stood pointlessly in the rocky wilderness.

Toph, as usual, was the first to break the uncomfortable stillness that had settled between them, by slamming her fist into Aang chest and sending him tumbling onto the floor.

"HEY! Oww!"

"Come on, Twinkles, stop slacking off. You got the break you wanted, so hurry up—let's go!" She admonished, her voice cutting off Aang sudden protests of pain.

Grumbling about overly bossy earthbenders, Aang stumbled to his feet and took the lead, trying to ignore the steady burning of his legs and the enormous bruise no doubt forming on his chest.

Then an odd revelation settled over him, followed by a sense of uncertainty.

"Hey…wait. Toph, where are we supposed to be going, again?"

An exasperated sigh.

"You know, Twinkle Toes? It's times like these that I wonder how you can even find the bathroom in your own house."

"Oh, really? Wh—**HEY!** What's that supposed to mean!"

"We're here!" Toph shouted, a brilliant smile making its way onto her face as she gazed into the brilliantly illuminated tunnel just in front of them.

Well, 'brilliantly illuminated' for her, at least.

Aang looked at her oddly, his normal eyes unable to pierce through layers upon layers of solid rock.

"What're you talking about? All I see are a bunch of rocks…"

And indeed it was.

Ever since they escaped the streets of Omashu, Toph had been leading Aang through a winding dirt road that cut a swath straight through the dense leafy wilderness and into the large mountain range that backed the city of Omashu. It had led them into an earthen pathway guarded on both sides by two towering cliff sides that shadowed the valley-like dirt road. Toph had claimed the path made an easy shortcut straight through the Omashu mountain range, but said path was now entirely blocked off by an enormous barricade of broken boulders—no doubt the result of some sort of avalanche that had collapsed on the path.

Toph rolled his eyes at him,

"Don't be silly, Twinkle Toes. I'm an earthbender, remember?"

With that, Toph shoved her fist straight through the craggy pile of rocks, as easily if she was merely pushing her hand through a thin film water. The staggered pile burst apart at her touch, the rocks tumbling around them like a waterfall of rolling stones that curved and flowed around her gracefully.

A sudden gust of bitterly stale air blew over them as the air within the cave depressurized.

Aang shivered anxiously, they were going _into_ the mountain? The idea of being surrounded on all sides by stifling rock, with the potential threat of the entire mountain collapsing at any moment, send a thrill of irrational fear jumping down his spine.

Or, as Toph would say, his spineless back.

"Why are we going in there? It's waaaay too dark, and cramped. No thanks, I'm perfectly fine here in the open air, thank you very much."

Aang found himself slamming onto the rocky floor again, painfully, as he felt Toph's annoyed glare burning into his back.

'_For the Spirit's sake, why does she always do that?'_

"Stop whining. The place is _awesome! _I can feel the vibrations of everything here, so it's not like we'll get lost or anything." Toph enthused, her eagerness to delve into the heart of oppressive darkness infectious to anyone who wasn't Aang.

Aang grumbled from his spot on the floor, but couldn't put up much of a fight as Toph grabbed him by the hand and dragged him across the floor and into the darkness.

"Butbutbut…Whyyyy hereeee?"

Sigh.

"Because we're being followed, moron."

A large circle of twelve men dressed in emerald robes and a large conical hats covering their faces stood on a cliff side overlooking much of the mountain range, their green uniforms blending in with the dense underbrush of the wilderness.

One of the robed men, completely identical to rest of his colleagues except for a tiny bronze eye embossed onto the emerald Li that rested on his head, stepped forward into the circle, snapped off a practiced salute and spoke in a cool, but urgent tone.

"Sir, it is as Sir Long Feng suspected. The Bei Fong girl and the boy are entering the Cave of Two Lovers as we speak."

Another agent in the ring, this one baring a small silver spiral on his headgear, snorted derisively,

"Of course, Long Feng is correct. It's basic psychology. The Bei Fong girl has been here before, so it is inevitable that she would choose to hide where she feels most comfortable. She believes it to be her 'home-turf', so to speak."

The agent beside him, having nothing more than a simple gold triangle stamped on his Li, chided the spiral-bearing agent,

"Relax. He's not paid to think, or analyze. His job is just to report, there's no need to dig into him. In fact, it would be _most_ _unprofessional _for him to color his observations with his own theories."

The admonished man stiffened almost imperceptibly, the silent jab having not gone unnoticed.

"So? What's the plan?" spoke another agent impatiently, this one with a bronze fist imprinted onto his Li—the most common symbol out of all of the men gathered in the clearing.

The agent with the golden triangle glanced sharply at all of them,

"Division C, I want you to follow them into the caves and do your best to force them toward the main exit—don't let them escape through any other way.

At his command, four men with bronze fists imprinted onto their Li's sunk into the earth, disappearing entirely in a few short moments.

"The rest of you, come with me. We've got a trap to set up."

"So, Toph…Why were those guys looking for you, again?"

Aang felt the tiny hand grasping his arm stiffen uncomfortably.

They had been wandering the tunnels of the cave in total darkness for a while, since both of them had neglected to bring flashlights or glow sticks in their harried escape from Omashu.

For the past hour or so, Aang had been filling the air with mindless chatter and pointless conversation—anything to get his mind off of the choking pitch-black darkness he found himself surrounded in—and Toph had obliged him by answering his small talk, letting them grow into full-blown conversations and allowing him to feebly try to distract himself from the fact that he was walking in complete darkness and guided by nothing more than a single hand held by a _blind little girl_.

Well, a blind little girl who could crush him into pulp with a flick of her wrist and who's vibration vision allowed her to constantly 'see' in a three-hundred and sixty degrees radius and was fully capable of observing every square inch of the cavern no matter how far they were from it or what stood in the way.

And thus could navigate the caves far more adeptly than even the most experienced tour guide navigating through a flat, empty patch of dirt in broad daylight.

But that was a minor, irrelevant detail.

_Anyway, what was I asking Toph again?_

Oh right. Those weird sunglasses guys back in Omashu.

Aang couldn't see anything, but he could practically _hear _the frown that made its way onto Toph's face.

"It's none of your business, Aang." She said stubbornly, her voice becoming rigid and leaving no room for argument.

Aang frowned uncharacteristically, his usual upbeat mood soured by the stifling stone walls and the blinding darkness that encaged him.

According to Toph, they had run into these horrible caves because they were being followed, most likely by the same people who had confronted them in Omashu.

These would be the very same people who were looking to return Toph 'home'.

If he was risking being stuck in these caves, he at least wanted to know why, _damn it_.

"I think it becomes my business when they're chasing after the both of us." Aang pointed out, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice.

Toph scowled, forgetting that Aang was depending on her guiding hand, pulled her hand from his to cross her arms in agitation.

In this darkness, however, Aang couldn't see that—all he knew was that Toph's hand was suddenly gone, and he was stumbling in the darkness without direction.

He couldn't help it—Aang panicked. The idea of wandering around these cavernous halls, alone, blind, and lost in a place where he could never feel the liberating breath of a passing breeze of fresh air nor see and experience the vast, incomprehensible heights to which the cerulean sky stretched was an unimaginable fate for Aang—it was his own personal Hell.

He would rather kill himself than stay in these tunnels forever.

"Toph? TOPH! Toph, where are you? I can't see!" He cried, all vestiges of his pride and composure evaporating into pure, adulterate panic as he flailed uselessly in the shadows, hoping to bump into her by chance.

Toph, only a few steps ahead of him, blinked in confusion, and then nearly slapped herself in shame.

'_How could I have forgotten? This is a cave, Twinkles can't see in caves…'_

A bitter, far more vindictive part of her felt like just leaving Aang in the dark—see how long he lasted in her world for once, and then maybe he'd stop prying into her life—but she shut it away without bothering to even consider it.

Aang was her friend, and friends don't abandon each other like that—no matter how annoying they were.

"TOPH! Please! Toph—!"

She reached out and grabbed Aang's arm again, ignoring the violent twitch of fear and paranoia that had suddenly erupted in Aang's body, and sent his already rapid heart into erratic spasms.

"…Sorry about that, Twinkles. I forgot…" She apologized, embarrassed and slightly shameful at the treasonous thoughts that had arisen in her mind, even for a brief moment.

'_What kind of friend am I?' _She thought sorrowfully. She knew what being blind felt like—heck, she had spent every moment of her short life being blind, trapped in her own personal darkness—but being blind without her vibration sight?

That was _Hell_.

Toph remembered what that felt like, she had just felt it on the bus just yesterday. It was a desolate world, something not worth living in—complete isolation from everyone around you, no matter how physically close they may be, and absolute dependency on those few people kind enough to lend a hand.

She wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even on her worst enemies—not that she had any, really, but that wasn't the point.

For Spirit's sake! This was her _first friend_, damn it!

'_What's WRONG with me?'_

Toph, distracted with a bubbling well of guilt and remorse, was thus entirely unprepared when she felt Aang wrap her into a sudden, desperate hug. His heart, which had been pounding itself into a maddened frenzy, suddenly slowed into a much more normal pace as Aang clung to her, seemingly trying to convince himself that she was really there.

Toph, despite the blood suddenly rushing to her head and the terribly awkward feeling of being hugged, allowed him to cling to her for a while longer.

She understood his need to reassure himself of her presence—she'd done the same thing in the bus too.

"S'ok, Toph…just promise me you won't do that again…" He was murmuring quietly into her hair and…

'_Is he…crying?' _Toph wondered, thinking she felt some pinpricks of water grace her bangs.

Squashing the instinctive urge to tease him for it, Toph pulled him a little closer to her. She was the one who'd made him feel like this, so she should have to deal with the consequences.

"I promise, Aang."

They stood there for just a moment more before Toph gently pushed him away, the pressure from all the blood rising to her face was becoming too much for her to bear—not that Aang could see it, luckily.

Toph grabbed him by the wrist and started trekking down the cave tunnels again but this time they walked in silence, Aang being too scared of annoying her to continue with his line of inquiry.

…

"I ran away from home." She answered, not really knowing why she was suddenly deciding to answer his question but only knowing that it helped ease the guilt in her.

"Why?"

Aang couldn't imagine it. Why would anyone run away from the place where they were loved by their parents, and had all their needs and wants cared for?

'_Why?'_ That was a good question.

"My parents, they always…I don't know. They cared too much." She fumbled, trying to explain her reasoning to such a simple, but penetrating question.

'_They cared too much? How can someone ever care enough?' _Aang thought, frowning.

Toph scowled at herself. Her explanation was stupid, pathetic even. There was no doubt in her mind that Aang wouldn't understand a word of what she just said—he would hear it, there was no question about that, but he wouldn't _understand_.

She scrambled to express herself adequately, trying to consolidate all of her fragmented and contrasting emotions into something tangible.

"They would always treat me like this helpless little girl who couldn't do anything, could never accomplish anything in her life. Someone who always needed to be looked out for, cared for, and constantly watched over."

Ah. Now, Aang understood. Toph was fiercely independent, and it riled her to no end whenever people thought she needed help just because she was blind. From what he knew of her, anything that would imply that she needed help was humiliation, it was scorning all the strength she had worked so hard to earn and ignoring especially her gift of vibration sight.

'_No wonder,' _Aang thought, _'That kind of pity must've constantly driven her over the edge. She probably couldn't stand being in there any longer.'_

The silence stretched out a little longer as Aang mused over what she said, trying to understand everything from Toph's point of view, but, as it dragged on, she took his silence as incomprehension.

'_Damn it, I'm not good at mushy stuff like this.' _She grumbled internally, annoyed at her apparent inability to express herself, _'Well. I tried. If Twinkles doesn't get it, that's his problem, not mine.'_

_Thump. Step. Step._

Aang turned suspiciously at the sound suddenly echoing in the once silent halls.

"What was that?" He whispered to Toph.

Toph hushed him, slowing to a stop and focusing on the gentle whisper of the earth beneath her. She stretched her awareness as far as she could, trying to ignore the pounding Aang's beating heart pulsating just beneath the warm skin of the hand she was holding.

The earth vibrated lucidly to her once more, painting a picture of overhanging walls of stone and a nigh-endless labyrinth of shifting corridors teaming with small animal life. She felt the clinking footsteps of a battalion of ants crawling beneath the soil and the heady pounding of the hearts of an entire colony of wolfbats beating in unison.

The vibrations rang out further, bringing tidings of a sole exit on the far side of the mountain, past a chamber of sculpted rock, smooth and unnatural but beautiful all the same with its gracefully twisting forms and inscriptions, which lay not too far away from where they were.

And…there!

Four human heartbeats thrummed with a quiet power and grace as they crawled on the ceiling and walked on the walls of the cavern, their footsteps almost imperceptibly stealthy.

They had snuck up on them, and were already uncomfortably close.

It was a chilling thought, she wouldn't have felt them if she hadn't been entirely engulfed in her own element.

Aang saw it too—tiny little orbs of green light glowing far away in the distance like twinkling stars in a sea of darkness, and felt a thrill of fear shudder its way up his spine.

He had no idea how their pursuers could see in this pitch-black darkness with such scant light, but they were closing in surprisingly rapidly and he knew that if it ever came to a confrontation in these halls, he would be severely impaired—if not entirely defenseless.

Toph turned, grinding her foot into the stone floor and lifting her arms—bringing Aang's right arm up as well—towards the ceiling before bringing her arms crashing down.

The cave walls trembled at her motions, the once sturdy tunnel ceiling collapsing into a rockslide as stalactites and jagged boulders broke loose from the ceiling and came crashing down onto the space between them and their pursuers—forming an enormous barricade of crashing stones that separated the two parties. The crushing rocks kicked up a thick, choking dust cloud that stifled the air around them.

'_Follow us through __**that**__.' _Toph thought smugly, smirking at the mountainous pile of rocks that blocked the tunnel way.

She pulled Aang forward again but stopped momentarily in shock when the ground behind them suddenly trembled threateningly in the tell-tale signs of earthbending. Suddenly, boulders were being violently ejected from their positions on the barricade, smashing into the tunnel walls and narrowly missing the two rogue Benders.

Toph felt a flash of horror jolt through her tiny body.

These were _earthbenders_. Enemy earthbenders.

And there was only _one_ agency that had access to fully trained earthbenders.

The Dai Li.

Toph swore virulently, prompting Aang to glance at her with a kind of surprised stupor.

The plan that she had quietly constructed in her head on their escape from Omashu was suddenly shattered into a thousand pieces. She hadn't accounted for the possibility that the Dai Li would already be on their trail so soon after their escape_—didn't they have anything better to do?—_and had banked on the hope that their pursuers would be her father's agents, the Bei Fong guards.

Guards that would have been easily disposed of when surrounded by her element.

But now, it wasn't their enemies that were surrounded in Toph's element—it was Toph and Aang surrounded by the element of their enemies.

Suddenly the Cave of Two Lovers, once what she considered to be her own impregnable fortress against their pursuers, felt like a lethal trap slamming shut on her.

Toph pounded down the hallway with Aang in tow, determined to lose the Dai Li agents in the winding halls of the cavern.

She hated the idea of running away, like some pansy little girl, but she knew she couldn't fight them all, not with Twinkles blind and useless in this place. These were the _Dai Li_, one of the Earth Kingdom's most elite agents and were both highly trained and heavily armed.

But she would be _damned_ before she would let the Dai Li subject them to whatever plans they had in store for rogue Benders like the two of them.

The slab of rock, seemingly obstinate and immovable, felt like a tender seedling ready to be shredded by a stiff wind.

He _pushed_, and the obstructing wall of stony debris exploded before him—sending the large stones bouncing off the rock walls like a game of pinball, creating a horrid cacophony of ringing sound as the racket echoed agonizingly within the restraining walls of the tunnel. However, even amidst the wall of sound, his trained ears picked out the sound of feet fleeing the scene.

He smirked and touched a button on the communications device hanging from his ear.

"This is Division-C leader to Command. We've just made contact with the targets, and they're on the run."

A crackle of static hissed at his ears before,

"_Good. Proceed with the plan."_

"Yes, sir."

He turned to the rest of his squad, his night-vision visor allowing him to easily pick them out even amidst the near pitch-black darkness. He stretched out his arms to direct them towards the two smaller tunnels that branched out left and right from the main hallway.

"Spread out and herd the rogues down the pathway and out the main exit. We have to prevent them from exiting by any other threshold by any means necessary, otherwise the entire plan is ruined."

His squad rushed to follow his orders as he smiled smugly. He had his orders—keep the Bei Fong girl and her little boyfriend on their toes for now. Make them think they were just barely getting away, before…

A nasty grin slowly made its way on his face.

They were closing in.

Like a legion of awakened revenants, the agents ghosted through the cavern halls, the whispers of their shifting robes becoming eerie voices shouting in their ears—declaring certain pain and destruction. Their ephemeral presences floated just behind the two Benders, lying so just barely with the borders of her perception

The earthen tunnels twisted and twined, branching off into a plethora of labyrinths that spiraled off into oblivion.

Toph knew them all.

The racking, dissonant sounds of wolfbat talons raking against stone, the clicking of ants crawling on the floor, the creaks and groans of shifting and straining stone. All of this, everything, was clear in her mind—the presence of wildlife, every crook and cranny of rock was plain and evident in her _sight_.

Except…

Except for them, the Dai Li. Something about them, whether it was just their training or their technology—something made it impossible to figure out just exactly where they were. The robed agents were flitting in and out of her vision, their vibrations cornering the edges of her perception one moment and then appearing alarmingly close in the next.

Despite only there being four of them, their signatures seemed to multiply before her, crowding the dusty, hallowed corridors of the ancient cave and engaging her sporadically, each time cutting off multiple avenues of escape—but, in every close encounter, there was always one exit they had failed to block, always one last avenue of escape for her to take.

She didn't know if they were being herded into a trap, or if her vibration sight allowed her to keep one step ahead of them every time.

'_Unlikely,' _She figured. As much as she wanted to believe that her skills were keeping them one step ahead, Toph got the sense that the Dai Li were merely _playing_ with them.

That realization sent a jolt of anger blazing through her and Toph narrowed her unseeing eyes at her enemies, a growl rumbling its way through her throat.

There was _no_ _way_ she was going to let her and Aang be herded into a corner like a flock of sheep.

Her _sight _screamed at her, and suddenly there were two Dai Li agents materializing out of nowhere—but right in the middle of their path.

Toph just slammed her hand into the stone wall of the linear corridor and the earth _roared_ at her command. An enormous chunk of stone, easily twenty feet long and half as thick, swung out from the rest of the wall and at the Agents like a giant revolving doorway.

Toph didn't bother stopping to watch its trajectory and slipped through the gaping hole in the wall into an adjacent corridor that branched off into two smaller avenues.

She darted to the right, still dragging Aang behind her, but a Dai Li agent emerged in front of her, blocking the way.

'_What? All four of them were just behind me! They still haven't gone through the wall!'_ Toph snarled, her thoughts whirling into a dizzying spin as she tried to figure out what was going on.

The three vibration signatures of the three other Dai Li had suddenly vanished from behind her and were now flying all over her mental map of the cave region—some of them roaming in circular patterns and others merely blinking in and out of existence.

Toph almost darted for the left route, but her mind suddenly threw up a warning flag in her head.

It was too coincidental.

Again, they only managed to block all but one avenue of escape, and the rest of the agents were nowhere to be found.

They were being herded. Like cattle.

Glaring virulently, Toph struck the air in front of her with her free hand, the swift movement causing an eruption of earthen spikes to leap out from the floor at the lone Dai Li agent.

The Dai Li swung his right arm out in response, sending out a disruptive shockwave in the ground that shattered the rows of emerging earthen spines, and reached into his robe with the left arm—retrieving an assault rifle from its voluminous depths.

_Click._

The safety was pulled down with a snap and the sharp sound rung into Aang's panicking mind, his fear compounded by his sheer helplessness in the dark halls. It echoed within his unconsciousness, rippling through forgotten memories and lost pasts.

The wild panic suddenly stilled and slowed, stomped down by a pervasive feeling of frigid calculation that burst to the forefront of his mind. Moving instinctually, as if having done it thousands of times, Aang pulled Toph flush against him, shielding her with his body, and spun the stale cavern air around him into a defensive shield.

The cave hallway was suddenly filled with a violent maelstrom that swirled around the two in a protective cocoon, kicking up a thick cloud of dust and rock and lashing out at the Dai Li agent with buffeting winds just as a hail of bullets came screaming down the tunnel.

The bullets spun and twisted through the air, their trajectories thrown off as the raging winds battered the lead shells and sent them flying into the cave walls. The shards of flying death ricocheted off the walls, bouncing around in the confined tunnels with lethal power as they choked the air with screaming metal.

Amidst the raging winds, a vicious wave of desperation gripped Toph.

They were going to get themselves _killed_. And it was because of her idiotic assumption that their little stunt at Omashu wouldn't bring the Dai Li swarming at their position as soon as they could.

She had underestimated Dai Li, and, if she wasn't careful, they were going to pay the ultimate price for it.

The violent winds, unbound by Aang's direction, took a life of their own and blasted the Dai Li agent into the caustic darkness that haunted the cavern hallways, before dying down entirely.

Toph dragged Aang down the left hallway, unknowingly breaking the trance that he had fallen into as she sprinted down the halls.

With her desperate feet stomping into the stone floor, Toph's vibration sight rung out into the darkness, illuminating the presence of two agents about a corner linking the tunnel to another one perpendicular to it.

'_Shit!'_

They couldn't see her just yet, but they soon would be able to.

She spun around, grinding her earth beneath her in a frantic attempt to find an escape path.

Another vibration pinged back at her like sonar, brightening the presence of a small entrance hole to an equally miniscule chamber within the walls. They slipped into as quickly as they could without making too much sound.

Toph grunted as she quietly shifted a wall of earth to close the threshold behind her, sealing off the chamber in hopes that the Dai Li wouldn't notice the makeshift door.

The door moved into place, fusing with the corridor walls without even a whisper.

Toph crouched to the ground, placing both her hands and feet on the floor as she attempted to pinpoint the Dai Li agents, who seemed to have a nasty habit of appearing out of nowhere.

The last thing they wanted was to have a bunch of them pop up right in front of their faces, after all.

Toph regulated her breathing, trying to calm her mind as she tried to listen to the rumbling voice of the earth beneath her fingers. The rock was pulsing, thrumming beneath her and she felt its every shift, and tasted every rumble, translating it into information that illuminated the perpetual darkness clouding her world.

She sought for the heartbeats, the footsteps, the breathing patterns—everything that made someone a living being in the eyes of her feet—of the Dai Li agents, and she frowned.

The Dai Li agents they had just encountered had become untraceable to her vibration sight, their signatures seemingly flying all over cavern halls. They were everywhere and nowhere, disappearing and reappearing at a moment notice.

Toph grunted in effort, her hands grinding the rock between her palms into dust, trying to pinpoint their position amidst all the interference. The wild signatures stabilized, becoming nothing more than jittery blobs of motion to her perception, a sharp contrast to the pristine clarity that she saw the rest of the cave in.

She couldn't tell _exactly_ where they were, but their general positions hung around at a comfortable distance.

'_Thank the Spirits…' _Toph sighed in relief, wiping the sweat from her eyes.

They were safe, for now.

Suddenly she found herself collapsing onto the floor wearily, as the sudden lull pushed out the adrenaline from her system and left her exhausted. She only vaguely registered Aang doing the same, mimicking her actions in order to get a better of the ceiling.

Aang whispered gently from his position on the floor,

"Hey Toph, look at that!" He whispered cheerfully as he pointed upwards, giving her an expectant look.

Toph only replied with a deadpan stare.

Aang blinked curiously at her expression before it hit him.

'_Doh!'_

"Right. Sorry, I forgot." He apologized sheepishly.

In all the chaos that had just occurred, he had forgotten Toph was blind. She just seemed so…_capable,_ so _confident_—nothing like anyone he had ever met that her blindness seemed incongruous.

"…Well, Twinkles?" Toph asked, breaking Aang's musings and the silence that had fallen on the hidden chamber.

"Oh! Um, the ceiling is glowing. It's got these bright patches of light all over the ceiling. I think it looks like some kind of fungus, or plant thing…" Aang trailed off, forgetting again that Toph was blind and couldn't understand the concept of light or glowing.

"…So?" Toph replied uncaringly, her temper drawn a little short by stress and exasperation at Aang.

"I think it's marking a pathway to the exit..." Aang replied, a bit of smile creeping into his voice.

She nodded absently, only half listening to his words as she considered her options.

They had locked themselves in a rather small chamber with a pathway that led directly to the main exit. It was a clear path straight out of the most obvious exit out of the mountain range, with no obstructing Dai Li agents or any bothersome cave-ins.

And, well…

It seemed a little too…_convenient_.

Toph had overheard a lot of things about the Dai Li, especially when her father met with some of the more…questionable people in his line of business. If there was any one recurring fact about the Dai Li, it was that they were particularly crafty and never directly engaged without setting the outcome entirely in their favor.

There simply was no way the Dai Li would be careless enough to just leave the main exit without any guards or a trick of some sort. But, there wasn't much of a choice really.

The Dai Li outside weren't too far away from their position. In fact, the agents were close enough that they would be able to tell exactly where she was if she decided to tunnel her way out. And she didn't fancy her chances with trying to take on one of them either, even with Aang now being able to see.

The horrid sound of exploding gunpowder and screaming bullets rung in her ears even now, and the memory sent shivers down her spine. She didn't really like the idea of being turned into Swiss cheese, thank you very much.

And _no_, Toph Bei Fong wasn't scared, damn it. She was just being smart.

There was a big difference.

_Anyways_, they didn't have much of a choice. Not with the Dai Li agents practically lurking right outside their door, so they would just have to chance with the suspiciously unguarded exit.

'_No sense in looking at the gift horse in the mouth, I suppose' _

Toph sighed almost tiredly, bringing Aang's quiet concern.

"What's wrong Toph?" Aang asked, prompting a flare of irritation to fire up in Toph's weary body.

"You mean, other than being less than a few yards away from some heavily armed and well-trained men bent on killing you?" Toph snarked, her temper fueled by her frustration at having to choose what felt like the wrong decision.

Aang winced, "Hey, no need to bite my head off or anything…"

She ignored him and rose from her bed of earth, motioning toward the long hallway illuminated by the glowing infestation of mold and algae.

The two Benders burst into the open air, leaving behind the stifling cavern tunnels and emerging into the sunlit freedom of the outside world.

Aang gave a huge sigh of relief, taking in a large gulp of fresh air that wafted up to them like a gentle fragrance. He lifted his arms up into the air, relishing in the gentle feel of sunlight pouring down from a cloudy sky and the whispering touch of the breeze—free and untamed.

"Aang—!"

A sudden cry of panic. Toph.

'_Huh?'_

_Click._

"Don't. Move."

'_Shit.'_

The unnaturally calm voice from behind him rang out into the open silence again.

"Keep your hands in the air and, slowly, turn around. No Bending or any funny business, or the girl dies."

Aang, as slowly and passively as possible, obeyed the voice and turned around to face the voice behind him.

Immediately, his blood ran cold.

The cavern threshold opened into a long earthen pathway that stretched out toward the horizon, and was ensconced on the right and left sides by a monumental wall of stone that soared up to the horizon, easily twenty to thirty feet high.

There were two Dai Li agents in front of him, both of them struggling to restrain Toph from breaking herself free while keeping her feet from touching the ground, and six Dai Li agents lined the tops of the walls, training the black metal barrels of their assault rifles on the struggling girl caught in the arms of the two Dai Li below them.

One of the Dai Li agents holding on to Toph spoke again to Aang,

"You will come with us, quietly. Or else, we'll kill you and the girl."

Aang glanced for moment at Toph, and was taken back by her large soulful eyes gazing at him.

Even whilst struggling against their arms and the muffling hand closed tightly over her lips, Toph shook her head.

Aang blinked curiously at her motion, prompting Toph to slam her free elbow into the chest of one of the Dai Li agents trapping her. The man grunted, absorbing the blow stoically, and tightened his grip on her, making sure to entangle any limb she could use against them.

Toph glared into Aang's eyes, and jerked her head at the sky.

Run. She was telling him to run and leave her.

'_Unacceptable. I can't do that.'_

Aang shook his head at her.

He couldn't do that. He couldn't just _leave_ his friend in the hands of the Dai Li.

Running wasn't an option here.

Aang glanced up at the Dai Li agent, his face a myriad of conflicting emotions—fear, anxiety, resignation.

"Alright. I'll go with you."

Toph screamed her protest, only slightly muffled by the hand over her mouth, and spun her body in a desperate maneuver—almost breaking more than a few bones by forcing her body into contortions it was never meant to endure.

The one of the agent's grip on her slipped for a just a second and, in that second, Toph broke one her feet free and slammed it into the ground.

The earth beneath them crumbled into a large crater, and a flurry of earthen spikes burst from the ground, slamming into one of the Dai Li agents and sending him crashing into the far wall. The earthen spires kept moving, lurching for the other agent, who barely had a second to let go of Toph to shatter the deadly spikes.

Immediately, Toph broke free from the grip of the other agent, landing onto the floor with both feet—her feet whirling and spinning on the ground, kicking up a thick cloud of dirt as the ground spun beneath her, and—!

**BANG**

An explosion of gunpowder blasted from one of the agents overlooking them, and Toph fell onto the floor with a blood curdling scream, clutching her shattered foot as she tried to stem the crimson blood oozing out from the wound.

The blades of rock forming around her crumbled into dust, useless and formless without her direction.

A snarl grounded its way out from the Dai Li agent standing over her.

"Shut up."

The last Dai Li agent on the ground below pulled out a Glock .44 and fired another bullet into her other foot.

Toph writhed on the ground, screams pouring out from her gaping mouth as her perception was engulfed in a bloody haze of pain. The world dimmed and turned black, and Toph fell still on the ground.

Aang watched her bleeding form twitching on the ground with the singularity of mind of a man who could see nothing more. The world dulled around him—sound held no more meaning, drowned out by the incomprehensible whisperings of hundreds of voices ringing in his mind, and the colors of his sight faded into shades of gray, the once vibrant colors of the world utterly sucked out from his eyes until it held no appeal to him.

Shades of gray. And Red.

Crimson Red.

Red that bled all over the sandy dirt, roughshod and speckled with rocks, dyeing it a similar crimson of death and spilled life.

His face twisted together, fists clenching in fury—

They _shot_ Toph in both feet, the means through which she saw the world.

It was the Toph equivalent of gouging out someone's eyes. And she might never recover, ever.

A ghastly storm of rage was thrashing in the confines of his mind, an indomitable fury that frothed violently—refusing to be suppressed and screaming for expression.

The voices, usually mere whisperings of hundreds of voices, clamored in his mind—their voices reaching a crescendo of screaming, rasping voices that spoke in unison, their words _vibrating_ with wrathful intensity.

_**KILL THEM.**_

Aang eyes slipped shut, his face contorting as his eyes clenched—his fleshy visage twisting and warping—

A typhoon of deathly, raging energy erupted in the crammed confines of the rocky clearing, its vicious azure light filling every nook and cranny of the pathway as it seared the eyes of the Dai Li agents—its light burning through their eyelids and clawing at their eyes.

Long Feng stood in a darkened room, the lights turned off in order to maximize the effect of the luminescence given off by an enormous screen displaying a kaleidoscope of video feeds.

Brilliant azure light was pouring through the screen, drowning out all other colors and all shapes and forms. Nothing more than the searing, eye-piercing light of the Avatar State. It was even interfering with the signals from cameras and, as the light rushed at the screen, thick static began to sizzle and crackle on the screen's feed.

Long Feng snatched a microphone from its resting place on the primary operation table,

"Striker Team 00158, mobilize a tactical retreat. Target has reached an unknown threat level. Repeat: Mobilize a tactical retreat."

But his words, calmly spoken with an undertone of steel, fell upon deaf ears—drowned out by the sound of bursting gunfire and grinding static.

The liquid flames were flowing through his veins once more.

He could feel the pounding light of the sun beating against his back, and the violent thrums of the lifeblood of the earth rolling tumultuously under miles upon miles of solid rock—the volcanic streams mimicking the crimson fire running through the veins of his own body.

He never thought he would live to see past that day, that day when thick clouds of sulfur strangled the air and hellish fire and brimstone rained from the heavens onto the devastated battleground below.

But here he was again, awoken to partake from that bitter cup, to savor the addictive taste of battle once more.

Zhong swore virulently, a rather vicious barb that insulted one's deceased great grandmother for some rather promiscuous activities engaging in bestiality, as the whole mountain suddenly buckled at their feet—the curvature of the Earth rearing up around them like the gaping maw of some voracious beast.

He, and all the agents on the cliff above, slipped his finger into the ring and pulled the trigger, their guns spitting out a maelstrom of screaming bullets, but even the roaring, ear-piercing sound of bullets being fired at full automatic was drowned out by the creaking and groaning of the earth beneath them.

Earthen blades were suddenly bursting up everywhere, sending up enormous chunks of debris into the air from the force of their arrival. Their stony edges formed a forest of lethal blades that soaked up wave upon wave of screaming bullets even as they continued to pour out from the muzzles of a dozen fully automatic machine guns.

The garden of blades flourished, their rampant growth undeterred by the repeated gunfire—consuming large tracks of land at an alarming rate and forcing the Agents to slowly back away or else be eviscerated.

"_Operative Z-15 reporting, what's status on the target?" _He questioned, speaking into the tiny microphone attached onto the visor of his head gear.

The feedback buzzed and crackled with static. No response.

Zhong ground his teeth in frustration,

'_Useless piece of shit. It's always when most important shit is going on that it blows up on you.' _He thought, scowling at the microphone of the ear piece on his visor.

A _rush_ of _something_ whispered to his ride, and he turned quickly—his gun immediately at the ready.

"What?—"

Crimson gouts of flame suddenly roared to life before his eyes, and the target was suddenly upon him, its body wreathed in a crimson cloak of raging flames with cold, glowing eyes that glared at him with inhuman hatred.

The Dai Li agent turned and swerved, dodging the initial blasts of flame as the muzzle of his gun flared with bursts of exploding gunpowder and lead.

It _moved_. The Target flashed across the distance between them with unnatural speed and suddenly he saw the ludicrously massive _drill_ of pure wind that had engulfed target's right arm—its razor point now directed straight at Zhong.

He gaped, it was as if the Target had harvested the screaming and wrathful length of a tornado and crushed it into the tiny space of his arm. The drill swirled, trashed, and raged against the Target's will but, even with such insanely powerful winds compressed into such a relatively small space, it could not escape.

He could only marvel, at such _Will_, such _Control_.

The Target _moved_ again, the hurricane on his arm nearingnearingneari—!

Zhong leapt away to dodge—

'_Too slow, fu—!'_

The cacophony of mercilessly raging winds screamed into his ears. Indescribable agony wracked his entire body and the last thing Zhong saw was his chest cavity flipping inside-out, his flesh and bone pulverized—!

Black.

A plume of dust burst into the air, creating an earthy smokescreen that settled lazily over the battlefield.

The Avatar stood up from where he had been crouched on the ground, and unclenched his right hand.

Its Hunger slaked, the Wind's presence burst from his arm, suddenly let loose of all restraints. It shouted its freedom, kicking up powerful wave of Wind that sent him flying into the air—dissipating the dust plume as it did so.

Molten fire coiled into his arms, a nebula of writhing flames swirling into existence.

He came down with the force of a descending meteor, crashing his palms into the ground and the nebula of flames exploded around him—billowing out into a curtain of crimson death that engulfed the mountain side in a titanic fireball and rocked the continent with an explosive shockwave.

The earth roared and trembled, enormous chunks of rock breaking off from the ground and sent flying into the air as everything _burned_.

The mountain was crumbling around him, unable to withstand the strain of the explosion.

The labyrinth of the Cave of Two Lovers was filled to the brim with an ocean of swirling flames, its tides licking and melting away at the rock as the cave structure collapsed from the shockwave that had blown apart its walls like toilet paper. Rumbling rock and smoking ash blew out from the cavern threshold as the mountain above it began to crumble like a house of cards, enormous ledges of rock breaking off and sliding onto the ground in a mass of shattered debris.

The pathway outside, the epicenter of the blast, was engorged in a funeral pyre of burning death, leaving nothing but an enormous crater in the ground, composed only of blighted, ashy dust—the walls of rock that had once contained the pathway entirely obliterated as well as the pathway itself.

His enemies were gone. Nowhere in sight.

Dead.

He relaxed, and the small puffs of fire that still lingered on the ashy plain died out.

Aang gasped for air like a drowning man enthralled in the arms of a violent sea.

His mind was fuzzy, sluggish—He couldn't think. Everything was confusing, why couldn't he understand anything?

What happened?

He…He couldn't remember anything.

Only the choking smell of burning flesh. Of green burning black from vibrant oranges that clawed, and consumed everything.

And…a scream. Toph.

_Toph?_

Aang opened his eyes, and was greeted with the sight of complete desolation. The ashen crater, blackened and scarred with the marks of fiery destruction, had no alikeness to the rocky, forested region that he had beheld before. The soil, once moist and cushy beneath his feet, was now fine black ashy that tainted the soles of his feet with the stench of death and charcoal.

He spun his arms in a spiral, whirpooling them towards an invisible point between his palms before thrusting them out.

A harried whirlwind blew from his palms, kicking up enough ash and charcoal to blacken the sky and make the air abrasive to the lungs.

Nevertheless, Aang plunged on, kicking up ash from the ground in a desperate attempt to see if something—anything—remained of his friend.

_Did I kill her too?_

Aang tried to shove the stray thought away from him, Toph was still alive…she _had_ to be.

Another gust of air blew from his palms, parting the ash on the floor like the Red Sea as it took to the sky and began swirling back at him as a wall of grainy darkness, a cloak that nearly obscured a slip of green poking out from the dust.

Aang leapt onto the spot, frantically plunging his hands into the dust and clawing through the ash like cartoon dog digging a hole to bury its bone. His hands eventually met flesh, and he dragged the whole body out from the pit—his attempts to be gentle entirely ruined by his desperate haste.

"TOPH!"

She was a mess; a bloodied, battered, and bleeding mess.

Her clothes were singed from the intense flames, the green material of her shirt turned flaky and tainted black by fire damage and smeared ash while her nylon pants had several large holes where it was simply burned off. Toph's skin smeared black in a thick coating of charcoal, dark as the night, and her skin beneath the black slough was raw and pink—but even crimson in some places.

She was still bleeding from her blackened feet, the skin cracked slightly from the intense heat and blood oozing from the bullet wounds and tricking down the crevices in her singed flesh to drip ominously on the floor.

Aang gazed hopelessly at her limp body, before Toph, in her indomitable manner, coughed weakly and blew out a cloud of ash from her lungs.

'_Toph…'_

He was at a loss for words, conflicting feelings of joy and grief clashing. Joy that she was still alive, that she hadn't succumbed yet, but pain and grief that _he_ was the one who caused it.

She needed medical attention as soon as possible.

Aang gathered up her small damaged form into his arms and his form blurred, urged on by swift winds pushing at his back, as he leapt out of the ashy crater and down the broken remains of the mountain pathway.

Holy Shit. It's been a year since I've last looked at this final draft.

This year's gone by so fast, I never even realized how long I've put this away…Nothing I can say can really justify my slacking, but dang—it's been a crazy year.

Hopefully, as the summer comes again, I can get crackin'.

Thanks goes out to WOLFBOY and Pretty-in-Green for getting my ass in gear.


End file.
